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.

Recovery

First full day back home. I took a nap this morning from 10:00-10:30 but was otherwise pretty normal, energy-wise.

James filled you in pretty much... he just left out that I had a parathyroid gland removed, also. The surgeon said that when they took the left anterior parathyroid out, that my parathyroid hormone level dropped into the normal range, and my calcium dropped to below range but not zero. This means that my 3 remaining parathyroid glands appear to be functioning properly, even though they were dislocated from their former home (my thyroid, which James already told you I had removed).

I'm waiting to hit the Day Three wall (I've heard days 3-5/6 are the hardest in terms of recovery) but so far am feeling mostly normal, minimal pain in terms of having a sore throat, and though I walked much more slowly this morning that is typical, I did manage to make it 2.5 miles.

My follow-up with the endocrinology surgeon is a week from tomorrow, when I'll get my Steri-Strips removed. Until then, I'm camouflaging my neck because there's some blood and nobody wants to see that. But I can tell under the strips that the cut is tidy and should heal to almost invisible. Apparently, I have a "nice neck crease" where the incision will hide (read: wrinkles and fat). 

Probably my biggest struggle is going to be not to get into my head about the fact that I now require synthetic thyroid hormone to live. If we have some big societal breakdown or something that prevents the production and movement of medication, I'll literally shrivel up and die. So wish me luck, losers!

Super grateful for all of the help we had to make this week go more smoothly: 1) Thanks to Indeed for laying James off so he didn't have to rush back to work but was able to be a lot more involved in the minutiae of taking care of the house and taking care of me. 2) Gracias to my parents who took us out for dinner the night before my surgery, and then spent the night in a nearby hotel so they could be here at 6:45 AM to hang out with Mal while we went to the hospital. 3) Sincerest appreciation to Kristen, Mal's friend Kona's mom, who let Mal go home for a sleepover after Tuesday group. 4) And also danke to my sister for showing up the day after surgery to bring me back home, and for hanging out and visiting. (She ended up having a surprisingly full day when, after she finally returned home, there was a tornado in Temple and she and Ken and the boys went up to help Hannah and Aaron secure their apartment and start to clean up a bit. Everyone's safe, which is the important thing.)