Park So-dam opens up about finding 12 nodules and rushing to surgery after thyroid cancer diagnosis

Park So-dam sat down on KBS 2TV's music talk show The Seasons: Sung Si-kyung's Eardrum Boyfriend on August 22 and walked through the illness that paused her career in late 2021, describing the physical and mental signals she almost attributed to ordinary fatigue. It was her most candid public account of the period, and the specifics were striking: scans found between 12 and 13 nodules on her thyroid, and doctors told her to get to the operating table quickly.

The actor, who announced her diagnosis of thyroid papillary cancer in December 2021, said the earliest signs were easy to dismiss. In her twenties, she had been the kind of performer who stayed on set after a cut, chatting with senior cast members and enjoying the social energy of production. That stopped. "As my body gradually got worse, that became impossible," she said. Exhaustion was only part of it.

What she noticed first

The mental shift came before she had a clinical explanation for it. Park said she began lying awake replaying scenes she had shot, something she had never done before. "I had never regretted a performance, but at a certain point I noticed myself negating who I was," she recalled. It was that psychological change, layered on top of the physical deterioration, that finally told her something was wrong.

The visible symptoms were contradictory in a way that made them harder to read. Her overall body weight was falling, but her face appeared progressively more swollen on camera. Her neck kept puffing up. When she eventually had scans done, the nodule count told the full story.

"They said there were 12, maybe 13 nodules," she told the audience. Doctors explained that if a nerve were damaged, she could lose the ability to produce a full range of sounds, a particular concern for someone whose voice is a professional instrument. Surgery was scheduled without delay.

Recovery took longer than the operation

The procedure itself was described matter-of-factly; what followed took more time to untangle. After roughly a month of minimal movement and bed rest, her muscles had locked up entirely. "When a person who is always moving suddenly lies still for about a month, all the muscles seize," she said. Rebuilding required daily Pilates sessions over an extended period, a slow and deliberate process she credited with restoring her physical condition.

She has since returned to acting. On the same broadcast, she performed two songs live, demonstrating that the voice she feared losing is fully intact. Thyroid papillary cancer is among the more treatable forms of the disease when caught early, though the recovery timeline Park described reflects how disruptive even a successful surgery can be on the body's overall function.