The patient almost invariably complains of a swelling in the neck in the thyroid region. Sometimes this is inside the thyroid gland and such lumps characteristically rise upwards towards the mouth on swallowing as the thyroid is tethered to the larynx which moves up on swallowing so taking the thyroid with it. On other occasions, the lump is in an adjacent lymph node to thyroid and is indicative of spread of the tumour to the nodes.
Rarely, the patient presents with breathlessness due to spread to the lings or bone pains due to spread of the cancer to the skeleton.
