EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the second installment in a three-part series on one man's cancer experience. The series ends Dec. 20.

Getting cancer -- even a "good kind" like thyroid cancer -- is scary.

After the diagnosis, I talked with five more doctors -- two oncologists, an endocrinologist, a surgeon and a general practitioner.

In all but one instance, I heard the same thing -- it's a mild cancer, it's been caught early, you're young and healthy, we have people here in town who really know about this and can take care of it. The odds of a complete cure were estimated at anywhere from 90 percent to 97 percent. Two said, almost word for word, that I would die many years from now from something unrelated to this.

Those recovery odds sound comforting, until you run the numbers in your head a bit and realize that they mean that about one in 20 people with this disease won't survive it. I think about that late at night sometimes.

Dr. Dan Hinckley has done many hundreds of this sort of surgery and was recommended by everyone with whom I spoke. Still, it was a little disconcerting when I met with him and his arm was in a sling, the result of a broken collar bone and ribs when he fell from a horse. Is this the guy you want operating on your throat?

My mood fluctuated from calm confidence to wild-eyed panic. My wife, Kathleen, and I spent hours on the Internet, focusing on Web sites prepared by reliable sources like the Mayo Clinic, National Institutes of Health, the American Cancer Society and the Thyroid Cancer Survivors Association.

We avoided message boards -- the information is often misleading or just plain wrong. The more we learned, the more reassured we were.

Still, we were dealing with the "C" word. It's important here to note that cancer is a broad term that actually refers to many different illnesses. Late-stage virulent cancers bear little similarity to early-stage slow-growth cancers like mine. That kept our panic level down, but there were difficult moments nonetheless.

As we prepared for surgery -- I say "we" because Kathleen was a full partner in the process and kept me reasonably calm, focused and in perspective -- we learned that the second phase in treating my disease is an iodine "bomb," a concoction of radioactive iodine designed to seek out any remaining thyroid cells and kill them.

To prepare for this therapy, patients go on a low-iodine diet to starve any remaining thyroid cells of iodine.

Sound simple? It is, I suppose. But it is decidedly not fun.

Here's what you can't eat: Dairy, fish, anything made with iodized salt (which includes most processed foods), anything made with Red Dye No. 3, milk chocolate (chocolate!), egg yolks or anything made with egg yolks (let that one sink in a minute), potato skins (my favorite part), or anything made with any of the above.

Eating out is out.

Taste is pretty much out.

I'm losing weight, which is good.

My surgery was Nov. 9. I was on the table for about 21/2 hours and, when I awoke, I felt surprisingly good (ah, morphine). Even as the morphine wore off, the pain was mild and I felt pretty good.

Dr. Hinckley reported that the surgery had gone well and he was optimistic. I was home a full day early.

A week later, the pathology report confirmed his optimism. The one lymph node Dr. Hinckley removed tested cancer-free, as did the uninvolved half of my thyroid. So, it appears that the cancer had been caught so early that it had been confined to a very small space. Dr. Hinckley said he was "90 percent sure" that I was already cancer-free, but that we should proceed with the iodine treatment to be certain.

I have a 6-inch horizontal scar running just above my collar bone, which will fade in time. Some of my more clever colleagues at the newspaper have suggested having neck bolts attached. And they wonder why I'm occasionally surly. Just weeks after the surgery, the scar has become far less obvious.

Still, I find myself unconsciously reaching up to feel it from time to time -- I really don't know why.