Getting my throat cut (aka thyroidectomy) and words you don't want to hear from your surgeon

 Mom used to joke, when she was particularly hungry, that "My stomach thinks my throat's been slit."  That cracked up my pre-op nurses when I told them I was getting hungry. 

 I think I scored points with my anesthesiologist when I guessed, correctly, that her name was Lebanese:  Arabic-sounding but with a French spelling.  In fact, my care team was a regular mini-UN: countries represented included Ethiopia, Lebanon, Korea, Phillipines, Nepal, and Cameroon!  Pretty cool! 

The OR was kinda fancy - narrow operating table, but it felt like it had lots of places where they could attach wedges or something to make sure I didn't move while the surgeon was digging around in my throat.  It also had 2 great big lights overhead - think an overgrown Ring light - that seemed to have a series of LEDs in them and were on moveable arms.  The anesthesia kicked in almost immediately so I don't remember a thing until I woke up in Recovery.

Except they call it the PACU - Post-Anesthesia Care Unit - which doesn't begin to convey what you go through.  Not just trying to come out of anesthesia, but dealing with the way my throat muscles feel after all the pushing, pulling and carving they were subjected to.  I got a rather lame dinner - meat loaf with gravy (which I didn't touch), some sad mashed potatoes, cooked carrots, diced pears (the only thing I finished), and a tiny container of ice cream so bad I didn't bother after the first coupla bites.  The Chief fed me some chocolate pudding once we got home, just to get some calories in me.

Practically the first thing the surgeon said when he came back to check on me was, "Your surgery was (tiny pause) challenging."  As expected, the surgeon found cancer in the R lobe, where we thought the only cancerous nodule was. It was “tightly adherent to the trachea and I had to shave a little bit of the trachea to get it out.”  Unfortunately, there was also a surprise in the L lobe:  “a similar-appearing mass that had grown through the thyroid gland and was tightly adherent to the nerve to your voice box and also was trying to extend into your voice box.”  No wonder my throat muscles are so sore!

 

That first night was rough - my face and fingers started feeling tingly, so I took some calcium, then got so nauseated that the Chief had to go out to get a Zofran Rx for me.  (Throwing up didn't feel as bad as I feared, but not what you want to be doing immediately post-op.)  Turned out, the pharmacy gave him my calcitriol Rx, not the Zofran, so he had to go back for it yesterday morning. 

Now we wait for the pathology report to come back.  Not good when the mass has grown through the original organ, but it doesn't sound like they had to take any lymph nodes, which I hope is a good sign.

They have to wait at least 6 weeks for things to heal up before the radioactive iodine, which my endocrinologist will set up.  I have a phone appointment with her on Sept. 9.