Jessi Ngatikaura revealed in The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives season 2 that she needed surgery to remove part of her thyroid — and now she’s detailing her diagnosis.
“I filmed my journey with this the entire season and you only saw about 10 seconds of it,” Jessi, 32, wrote via Instagram on Saturday, May 17. “[I] wanted to share my experience for anyone going through something similar.”
Jessi also uploaded a video montage of her health scare, starting on January 3 of this year.
“So, basically, when the show came out last year, I had a few nurses reach out to me and tell me that my thyroid looked enlarged,” Jessi explained, while getting ready to check into the hospital for surgery. “At first, I was like, ‘Oh, whatever. They probably don’t know,’ and I blew it off.”
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After receiving more social media messages about her thyroid, Jessi’s husband, Jordan Ngatikaura, took a peek at her body.
“He was like, ‘I think I see what they’re seeing,’” Jessi added, noting she was subsequently inspired to see her doctor. “I really thought I was going to go in and it was going to be nothing, but my blood work did look a little suspicious to them, so they did an ultrasound and they found seven nodules.”
Jessi further explained that she had six “small nodules” on her left side, and one larger one on her right “that was not fine.”
“They had me do a scan, and the scan basically determined whether the nodules were hot or cold,” she said. “If they’re cold, it means they’re not cancerous. … Mine were hot [and] I had to do a biopsy.”
The results of Jessi’s biopsy, however, came back inconclusive as to whether the nodules were cancerous.
“Already, at this point, I’m feeling some of these symptoms. I’m having a hard time swallowing, a hard time breathing [and] my neck is always tense,” she added. “It just feels uncomfortable. … It affects my talking and my voice. It’s gotten so much deeper in the past little bit.”
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Following her doctor’s advice, Jessi underwent surgery to remove half of her thyroid.
“Doing the partial is probably the best option because it’s the least invasive, obviously, between the partial and the full,” Jessi said. “I’m still going to have a huge scar on my neck … but I won’t have to be on medication most likely. I’m trying to see the silver lining and the positive side and not freak out.”
After the surgery, Jessi said that she was already feeling “a little better” despite a slightly sore throat.
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