The good, the bad, and the ugly.

Well fortunately I have some good news to share since my last post! I spoke with my surgeon yesterday and the good news? No more surgery for me! Woohoo! Basically after talking with my endocrinologist, they both decided that removing the remainder of my thyroid is unnecessary at this time. The area of cancer that was found was extremely small and fortunately it was removed during the surgery. The doctors went back and reviewed the thyroid ultrasound I had done a couple months back and could see no evidence of any nodules or abnormalities of the right side of my thyroid so there's no reason to believe there is anymore cancer left. So basically I will just be followed extremely closely by my endocrinologist and have thyroid ultrasounds every 6 months to check for any new growths. I'm confident in my doctors that they are making the right decision so I feel really good about the situation...and of course I'm glad to not have to have any more surgery at this point. Yay for good news!!
Now, on to the bad and the ugly. Wednesday afternoon I got a call from our bank's fraud department about some suspicious transactions on my debit card. Come to find out, someone got their hands on my debit card number and went on an online shopping spree totaling in more than $1,000!! So we instantly had the debit card canceled and I even went as far as to pull my credit report and put a fraud alert on my file with all the credit bureaus. (Credit report was fine fortunately!!) I just couldn't understand how anyone got their hands on my debit card number!
I racked my brain thinking of instances of where someone could have looked in my purse or stolen it online....but I kept coming up short. Last week I stayed in the house all week and didn't use my debit card at all. This week I did normal things: Monday- bought groceries and paid 2 bills online (nothing abnormal), Tuesday-bought gas, Wednesday-nothing. While going over my week with a coworker she told me about a news story she had read about criminals who put a device on gas pumps where you swipe your card that actually steals your debit card number when you buy gas and also when you use the ATM. WOW! This was not something that I had heard of before but it made sense...I got gas on Tuesday afternoon and by Wednesday $1,000 was missing from our account. I called the police department to file a report and asked if this was something that happens often in the area and the lady told me they have had several cases of it lately. GREAT! Fortunately we caught the activity early enough and I believe we were able to cancel the card quick enough so that the charges never ended up clearing and the criminals were not able to actually receive any of the stolen stuff. Whew!
I would just warn all of you to be very careful when buying gas at the pump or when you use the ATM. Take the time to inspect the card swiper and if you notice anything unusual, or if you notice that you are able to actually move the swiper, call the police immediately! I would also advise you to pay inside when you can to avoid possibly becoming a victim all together. Take the time to research this online. It is called "skimming" and we all need to be aware of what's going on and how we can protect ourselves. It just amazes me what people do sometimes.
Well that's all the updates for now! Hopefully this is the last of the bad news for a LONG time!