Final (maybe? hopefully!) bit about the parathyroid/thyroid drama

Yesterday, I had my follow-up with my surgeon. She took the Steri-strips off of my incision site, and I had been thinking, "Yay! No more neck coverings!"

Well, two things: 1) I cannot let sun get on the scar at all, and I am only to use Aquaphor on it 3-4 times a day for the next two weeks. After that, I am to use silicone tape for 6-12 MONTHS to protect it. Yikes! Scar care is definitely a long game! 2) That area is SO SWOLLEN. As my regular endocrinologist said, "Your tissue is mad!" So for now, I'm wearing false collars and scarves. And it's hot. Let's all feel very sorry for me. Thank you.

And I have one more thing to add regarding the whole "getting diagnosed and surgically healed before I knew there was a problem" angle:

I followed up with my surgeon yesterday, and my endocrinologist today. Of course, everything that was taken out of my neck (one parathyroid, my entire thyroid, and several lymph nodes) was biopsied. The 9 millimeter adenoma on the left lobe of my thyroid was papillary thyroid cancer. Thing is, there was another adenoma, 4 mm, on the right lobe of my thyroid that no one had visualized (I had multiple ultrasounds, the nuclear Sestamibi scan, and an accompanying CAT scan that went all the way around to the back of my neck.

That smaller adenoma also tested positive as cancer.

The parathyroid and the lymph nodes all tested negative for cancer, and the surgeon said she wasn't sure exactly what happened, but that thyroid cancer is very slow-growing, and also maybe the inflammation from the Hashimoto's kind of created a "shell" around my thyroid so nothing spread.

So, there we go. I'm cancer-free before I even knew for sure that I had cancer. Kind of makes me glad my parathyroid started acting up, because otherwise, who knows when we would have found this.

Also, I'm grateful for my surgeon and her confidence that I needed to remove my entire thyroid, even though a support group I am in suggested getting a second opinion. I trusted her and she was right. She saved me another surgery down the road. This hasn't exactly been a nightmare, but it's not something I care to repeat.

I'll test for antibodies again in October. They should all be gone by then, assuming that there is no remaining cancer. If anything ever comes up in the future, I might have to get radioactive iodine treatment to kill any microscopic thyroid material left in my neck... but I'm planning for that not to happen, so I haven't even looked up what that involves. 

My remaining parathyroids appear to have stepped back up and are maintaining my calcium levels. I test that and my thyroid hormone levels in July.

Continue to feel very fortunate and grateful.