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Okay, and here we go again with projecting onto the snek boi.

For context, I had thyroid cancer about a year and a half ago and had to have half of my thyroid removed, and the remaining half isn't doing so well 'cuz I also have Hashimoto's thyroiditis, and unfortunately, thyroid hormones are pretty important. I've been getting better, but I wrote this fic a few months after the surgery to cope with how messed up I felt 'cuz giving fictional characters my problems makes me feel better. Does giving imaginary people real medical issues make sense? Maybe not, but in fanfic, anything is possible (sparkles).

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Janus let out a quiet sigh, leaning forward to pillow his head in his arms, which were resting on his desk.

He was tired.

So tired.

Which was ridiculous, since he'd just woken up a little over two hours ago, and he'd gone to bed early last night and still slept in that morning. He'd gotten more than enough sleep, so he should be fine. And he had work to do- it's not like it would just finish itself. He didn't have time to still be tired. He was behind enough as it is.

And yet, he was still tired. Granted, he wasn't currently tired enough to just pass out at his desk, but he was more than tired enough for his brain to refuse to actually let him do the work in front of him. His tasks for the day weren't even particularly difficult- he just couldn't muster up the slightest bit of motivation to do them.

He knew why, of course. This wasn't just some random exhaustion or the result of poor sleep. No, Janus had been dealing with this for months at this point.

And he hated it.

Simply put, Janus had cancer a few months ago, specifically thyroid cancer. He didn't know why a figment of someone's imagination could get cancer (or what would have happened if he let it go untreated), but they could get colds and such, so apparently cancer was on the table as well. Which, for Janus, really sucked, seeing as he ended up having it.

The thing was- it wasn't like he had really bad cancer or anything. He hadn't even known anything was wrong, and he wouldn't have known anything was wrong- if he hadn't gone to get a routine check-up at the doctor.

Since all the sides could get sick, there had always been a hospital staffed with doctors and nurses in the imagination. They were just characters, of course, but they could do their jobs well, and the sides had always gone to them for treatment, ever since they appeared in the mindscape. Their services weren't needed all that often, but they were there for when one of them needed medical attention. A precaution.

Janus hadn't gotten a physical in a while, and for the sake of maintaining his health, he decided to go. Getting routine medical care is self care, after all. But at the time he hadn't anticipated anything being wrong- he'd just gone to essentially confirm that he was fine.

Except he wasn't.

To begin with, the doctor wanted him to get blood work, which revealed that his TSH levels were a bit high. Subsequent blood work revealed that he had an extremely high level of antibodies attacking his thyroid, confirming that he had Hashimoto's thyroiditis. At the time, his TSH levels were close enough to the normal range for the imaginary doctor to recommend keeping an eye on it rather than starting him on medication. And Janus thought that would be it.

But it wasn't.

No- the doctor also wanted him to get an ultrasound on his neck, apparently standard procedure for someone with Hashimoto's, just to check on what was happening underneath his skin.

Janus thought that was the end of it, but again, he was wrong.

Because there was a nodule in the right half of his thyroid, one large enough to be a cause for concern (which was strange to him because it was still rather small, only a bit over a centimeter in diameter, and he couldn't even feel it).

After another ultrasound, a biopsy, and genetic marker testing (that the characters somehow knew how to perform. Somehow.), the doctors still couldn't quite tell if the nodule was cancerous or not. It was 50/50. And Janus didn't know much about cellular morphology and cancer, but he knew enough to know that the results of the biopsy weren't so great.

And so, he agreed with the doctor's recommendation of having half of his thyroid removed, just to be safe.

Which turned out to be the right call because, lo and behold, the doctor was able to confirm that the nodule was cancerous after it had been removed. Which was almost a shock, but it was gone now. The doctor told him that it hadn't shown any signs that it had spread, so as long as they kept an eye on it to make sure it didn't come back, he should be fine.

So, Janus had cancer, but he hadn't even gotten complete confirmation of that until it was gone. Which was fine, since he didn't need to worry about it now. He was fine (though, none of them were sure if a side could die anyway, so maybe he would have been fine regardless. Or maybe he would have been left alive but in excruciating pain at some point. He didn't know).

Janus had cancer, but he healed.

Eventually. It didn't take that long for the incision to heal, he supposed, but even still, the skin there was sensitive- a strangely numb-yet-not feeling combined with a sharp sting that arose whenever the skin was pulled too tight or if it was brushed up against with too much pressure. His neck still pulled a bit strangely when he swallowed, but it wasn't really painful anymore. He most certainly preferred it over the aching soreness that attacked him every time he attempted to swallow so much as a sip of water.

Remus was the only one he informed about what had happened, both because Remus was the only one he actually somewhat trusted at that point and because he wasn't going to be able to deal with the man's antics while recovering from a surgery that cut a hole into his neck. The exhaustion was definitely at its worst back then, so perhaps he shouldn't complain about this technically lower level of exhaustion he felt now. Though, recovering from surgery probably counted as it's own little category of being tired, one separate from 'this is literally my everyday life now.'

But, yes, he healed and eventually got on with his life. And once the initial healing of the wound was done with, he was starting to feel better.

Until the lack of thyroid hormone, caused by removing half of an already underperforming organ, started to prove the necessity of having a working thyroid in the first place. The exhaustion he now knew well settled over him slowly- starting with just a little extra tiredness and eventually sinking him deeper and deeper down into a fatigue that he hadn't really experienced before, both in feel and duration. Describing the feeling, or at least its differences compared to normal fatigue, was somewhat difficult. It felt different, but only in ways that he couldn't explain if someone were to ask. He'd eventually decided on thinking of it as 'a physical tiredness that took away almost all the motivation he had'. Which was perhaps a tad bit dramatic, but that was his style. The duration, of course, was the bigger issue. He could deal with being exhausted for a day, a few days, even a week. But this exhaustion extended over months.

To no one's surprise (or, really, just not to his since no one really knew), Janus had to eventually start taking Levothyroxine to replace his thyroid hormones, since his TSH levels were about five times the normal levels when he got blood work again. Then, when his next round of blood work revealed the levels were now twice as high as where they should be (combined with his continuing symptoms), he had his dose increased.

The increase was recent, though, so he was still waiting for it to start working more (which could take weeks).

And so he was exhausted.

Janus managed to force himself to do his work for a few more hours (though the quality was admittedly not great) before he had to give up for a bit. His mind and body were practically begging him to go take a nap, and after the fifth time he had to catch himself from shutting his eyes, Janus gave in.

He stood from his desk and snapped his fingers, trading his usual outfit for his pajamas. Then, he slid under the covers of his bed and bundled himself up.

He'd just take a short nap. Then he'd be rested enough that he'd be able to finish his work. This was okay; it was just a break. Taking short breaks is fine- it's self-care.

And so he closed his eyes and laid there for a while, the exhaustion hanging over him heavily, but his circadian rhythm fighting against it.

I'm the meantime, Janus shivered and pulled the blankets closer. And then he started massaging his joints- fingers, feet, the backs of his knees. Because apparently, hypothyroidism also had a nasty habit of making you eternally cold with aching joints. Lovely. The 'always cold' bit was actually somewhat ironic, considering that Janus had spent years insisting he wasn't actually cold-blooded, but he certainly felt like he might as well be, now. The joint pain was also, well, a pain. It drove away sleep despite the fatigue because it was just so uncomfortable. He felt like he had to either be rubbing the joints or moving them to keep himself at some level of comfortable, especially those in his feet.

But, regardless of the aches and the cold, Janus really was too tired to resist the pull of sleep much longer, and he eventually drifted off.

XXX

He woke up to someone barging into his room, shocking him awake. He sat up with a fuzzy head and a strangely-beating chest. He wasn't sure if the confusion and odd-feeling heartbeats had anything to do with his thyroid problems, but they had started up sometime before he'd been diagnosed with the Hashimoto's. Either way, both were annoying.

Shaking the blurry feeling out of his head, Janus focused onto the image of Remus standing in front of his bed.

"Heya, Janny! Have a good nap?"

Janus blinked up at him.

"Fuck, what time is it?" he asked, rubbing his eyes.

"Hm. Like, 4:30?"

Janus snapped his head toward him.

"What?!"

He'd slept for almost four hours? How could he have possibly slept that long? He'd already slept so much last night; how could he have been so tired that he'd nap like that (and how could he still be tired, even now)?

"Fuck," Janus cursed aloud. "I had things to do! I can't believe I wasted the whole day!"

At this, Remus's facial expression softened into a look Janus had been getting more and more familiar with since getting his surgery.

"DeeDee, you had cancer a few months ago, and now you're missing a chunk of an organ. No one's gonna get on your back for taking a nap," Remus told him.

Janus rolled his eyes.

"I keep telling you, the cancer wasn't even a big deal. I didn't even notice it," Janus insisted. "And it's been months."

Remus rolled his eyes back at him.

"Yeah, 'cuz you caught it early," Remus reminded him. "And even if the cancer's gone, the missing most of an organ thing is still a big deal."

Janus couldn't really argue with that part. Really, his symptoms were the result of losing most of his thyroid. It wasn't the cancer that made him like this. It was the treatment (sometimes, it almost made him wonder whether the surgery was worth it, and he had to remind himself that he didn't really want to test the theory of whether a side could truly die).

"That doesn't change the fact that I still have things I need to do," Janus huffed.

He really hated this. On the one hand, as an embodiment of self-preservation and an advocate of self-care, Janus knew that he needed to take care of himself. He knew that his health was important, and if his body was telling him he needed to rest so badly, then that's what he should do. On the other hand, though, Janus couldn't help but feel like he was being lazy. The amount of time he now spent doing absolutely nothing or falling asleep was, in his opinion, becoming excessive, especially since he was already healed. It wasn't like he could keep doing this forever, but Janus found it so difficult to resist the urge to rest sometimes. He didn't know how to balance the reality that he was exhausted with the other reality that he needed to get things done. At what point was he taking care of himself, and at what point was he just being lazy? He was selfish by nature, so he couldn't help but think that he was leaning too far into his newfound desire to do nothing.

"You can do them later, Dee," Remus insisted. "You won't be able to actually do them if you're too tired to focus, anyway."

"But I shouldn't still be this tired!" Janus argued. "It's been almost six months, Remus!"

This was yet another thing about this situation he hated. He tried not to do it too much, but he couldn't help complaining about the situation to Remus, more often than he really should. The whole situation was just so frustrating, and complaining to someone else felt better than just stewing in it by himself. Every time he did, though, Remus just reassured him that it was fine, which should be endearing but instead just made Janus feel more frustrated.

"Dude, if you're tired, you're tired," Remus told him, putting his hands on his hips. "I know you don't like it, but if that's how things are gonna be for now, you're just gonna have to accept naps."

Then, he leaned over and poked Janus on the nose, making him glare up at the creative side.

"Anyway, we should probably start dinner soon," Remus changed topics. "I took the chicken out of the freezer earlier, but don't be surprised if some of it's missing."

Janus raised an eyebrow.

"Do I want to know?"

"Nope."

XXX