[CycleColo2013]

#1059992

Reading experiences of others is enormously helpful to me; I hope relaying mine can be helpful to someone else. It seems like we have a trio of TT activity, I am following Amy’s post-surgery diary and following Gabe’s imminent surgery.

Pre-surgery: Simply weird to be stripped of everything.  No ring, keys, eyeglasses, watch, iPhone, Nook, contact lenses, wallet, clothing.  I don’t think of myself as a person that is attached to stuff, but it was unsettling for me think the only thing separating me from the chunk of flesh on the next table was a little plastic bracelet with my name and birthdate on it.  It was a relief that they scanned and verified it so often.  It left me confident if I did make it out alive, it would be minus a thyroid and not a gall bladder.  

Before being rolled in – a visit with the surgeon and anethsethiologist followed by a third year resident doing a surgery rotation.   She introduced herself and asked if I minded if she scrubbed in and observed.  I was fine with that. 

Being rolled in and waiting to go under was not my favorite part.  There was a wait for the anethsethiologist, so I got to look around a bit.  He got there and I breathed through the mask twice and I remember nothing else. 

Surgery: The third year med student later relayed to me that she didn’t understand why the surgeon wasn’t concerned about where the second two parathyroid glands were after she got the thyroid out.  She was a bit embarrassed to ask why the surgeon did not say anything about the additional two parathyroid glands, when the surgical assistant spoke up and asked the question.  Apparently it was because at that point she had only pulled out half the thyroid!!!  So huge that half if it looked like a whole one! 

Waking up: felt okay, better when they found my glasses. I know I offered a whole bunch of nonsensical jabbering, and I knew I was not making sense but I just kept on. 

That afternoon my partner and the boys came (12,11). I had told him he shouldn’t bring them, I did not want to scare them with the way I looked.  The younger insisted and later told me that he had to come see for himself that I was ok. 

One night in the hospital – vocal chords are fine, simply irritated, and parathyroids cranking appropriately to keep calcium levels in check. 

Home the day after, somewhat sore and extremely tired afterward and I’ve stayed that way. I kept expecting this day they told me about where I was supposed to feel great and not overdo it…  Not my experience today. Mostly fuzzy and unfocused.  Extremely hard for me to surrender and let myself do nothing…I got better at it as the day wore on.   

I had a couple of pain meds at the hospital, passed on a few doses.  I generally shy away from that stuff…  I had took a couple yesterday but I couldn’t really tell that they were making a difference.  It is too dramatic to use the word painful to describe how I feel. It’s really more sore and uncomfortable – which makes total sense given all the knocking about they did in there.  

Any questions, comments or unsolicited advice? Don’t hesitate!

Cheers, Bill

[Raspberry]

#1179456

Congratulations on your successful surgery!

[Gabe]

#1179457

Hi Bill. Thank you so much for the detailed post. I’m glad to hear you are on the mend. I’ve heard that as much as you would like to be feeling better and up and about, those first few days your body says different.

I can imagine the wait will be the hardest part. I’m already anxious waiting for my day. I really appreciate you taking the time to post.

I hope each day gets better for you! Get some rest and dream of your favorite bike ride….

Karen

[SueAndHerZoo]

#1179458

Hi Bill.
Let me join the group who is extremely grateful to you for sharing the experience before, during, and after. It’s probably the last thing you feel like doing but you logging on, first to let us know you’re OK, and second to share what it’s like, is priceless. I hope I can do the same if and when I go for surgery (hopefully in the next month or two).

I have only been “put under” two times and the first time I remember waking up and being very sick to my stomach. I think that was the worst part of the whole procedure. The second time (20 years later) I told the medical staff that I hated that part of surgery and they said they could put something in my IV that would prevent that. It apparently worked but I was so tired I could barely stand to dress myself and leave (outpatient surgery).

I can imagine that throwing up after thyroid surgery would not be a good thing so I’m wondering if you were sick to your stomach? Since I would be staying there overnight I guess I could ask for the anti-nausea stuff again – doesn’t much matter if it makes me sleepy, right?

Also, since you graciously offered to answer questions, were you able to swallow pills the next day? I take a concoction of meds every morning and am wondering how I will get those the day after if we cant swallow anything solid.

Thanks again and in advance for your updates. Much appreciated.
Sue

[amosmcd]

#1179460

Hi, Bill–

Glad to hear your surgery went well. I know it’s really weird the way one feels right after you wake up. I don’t even remember my time in the recovery room aside from being painful and maybe they gave me ice chips?

I’m glad you haven’t had issues with pain. Definitely discomfort is a good way of wording it. I had a lot of discomfort with lifting my head up and down, and swallowing, but definitely popsicles helped with the swallowing discomfort!

My only advice now that I’m almost a month out, is to really take it easy. I felt so good before and right after surgery, that I did too much. Especially my first full week back, I had appts scheduled before work (I work evening shift) a couple days that week, and it made for a very long day. By the end of that week, I was completely wiped out.

Assume you might feel worse before you feel better. (Well, re-reading your post, I see that you are feeling worse–d’oh!) I wish my docs had told me that. Or maybe they did and I forgot. My memory is not the greatest! But try not to be discouraged if you do. I felt so good after surgery, I thought that was that and life is great now. But then I crashed when the surgery caught up with me and my thyroid levels went a bit hyper. I think the surprise of that was the most discouraging part. But as I’ve learned from the great people on this forum, you have to be patient, patient, patient.

I hope you recover from the worst of the post-op period quickly, and that each day brings you new strength.

Amy

[amosmcd]

#1179461

Hi, Sue–

I hope you don’t mind if I jump in and answer some of your questions since I saw them.

I had to take all my medication by mouth once I got to my hospital room. Including the huge calcium pills they gave me. I was able to do it, but I had to drop my head down and take a big gulp of water to do it. Each time got easier. All the other pills I took were a lot easier. It took me about a week before I could drink water out of a bottle. Lifting my head up to drink and then swallow was too uncomfortable. It gradually gets better.

I ate a soft dinner the night after surgery in the hospital. I had cottage cheese with peaches, chocolate pudding and and scrambled eggs with cheege, and a smoothie. I was VERY hungry! I ate soft food for about 4 days, and then was able to eat regular food.

I work in a post-op unit in a hospital, so we see a lot of patients with nausea after surgery. I was not nauseated, but if you have a history of it, I would definitely mention it to your surgeon AND the anesthesiologist and any nurses to make sure you get something for it in your IV once you’re awake and before you get up to your room. They can also give it to you once you’re up in your room. I would think throwing up after a TT would be very painful and uncomfortable, and not something your surgeon would want to have happen.

Hope this helps!

Amy

[adenure]

#1179462

Hi Sue,

Thought I’d chime in too- I didn’t have nausea after the surgery, and I was able to swallow pills that day. I only took Advil for pain relief. I was worried about swallowing them initially so I tried to cut them and grind them up (NASTY!) So, I decided swallowing them was easier than dealing with the taste!

As far as food, I kept it fairly mushy the first 24 hours, but after that, I ate normal food.

[Stymie]

#1179463

Thank you for sharing your story with us!! And glad everything went well.

Good luck on your recovery! Rest up and let us know how it’s going.

Big hugs!

Diane

[CycleColo2013]

#1179464

I was lucky as far as nausea. My surgery was not first up.  It was scheduled for 11:00 and began an hour late.  I did not have a drop to drink or eat after 1 am the night before. They said I could have a sip of water with morning meds; I forced myself to swallow them dry. I don’t know if any of it made a difference. It might be thanks to the cast iron stomach I inherited from the paternal side of the gloom and doom catastrophe anticipating ancestry (I mentioned in an earlier post). 

I did not have too much difficulty swallowing that first night, but the pills were small, the calcium chewable, and I was still too out of it (anesthesia) to see the menu continued after breakfast.   I ordered blueberry pancakes and turkey sausage.  Pancakes were soft, easy.  Sausage was too uncomfortable.  Overall, the difficulty in swallowing cleared up pretty quickly. 

When counting the number of days to pass before  levothyroxine on day 5.  I decided to include my day of surgery, I am ready to mix it up.  

Today – still somewhat sore, low energy and was not successful finding a shirt in my closet that would cover the scar and bruising and was lightweight enough not to keep from laying on irritating the scar.  It was also a day to contemplate some emotions associated with this.

What the surgeon likely said about recovery was, “You will probably be pretty wiped out for a couple of days. Some people get hyper the next day because they’ve got extra hormone floating around, and hyper is more dangerous than a little bit of hypo, so we wait a few days on the hormone replacement. Just focus on paying attention to the calcium.”

Wait, did someone just ask what I heard the surgeon say?  

“Most patients wake up feeling great the next day because they have extra hormone floating around and then they do too much and crash the following day.  You will be fine if you take it easy. And if that feel good day doesn’t happen to you it is probably because you have done something wrong, you have a calcium issue or because there is something so physically wrong that is going to make you one of those 1 in 100,000 that would have been better off never letting a butcher withe her scalpel near you.”

I know what your thinking – this guy is a complete neurotic. And he must be lying in that earlier post when he said he had years of therapy.  What can I say?  When you are raised by prophets of doom with cast iron stomachs and you are scared and drained by “minor” surgery you sometimes resort to old and comfortable patterns.  

So this morning when I failed to muster the requisite energy to jump out of bed and embrace the day, and my arm was tingling I feared “calcium issue.” Until I remembered, the tingling in my arm is what I feel every Sunday when I lay on top of my arm for thirty minutes reading the NY Times on my iPhone.  And the reason I have that Sunday morning habit because I need something to fill the time between waking up and getting out of bed because in my 48 years on the planet  I have never jumped out of bed, happy to embrace the day!

Without the aforementioned therapy, I would have wasted tons of time trying to get the surgeon on the phone so i could find out day where I should get my calcium levels checked on a Sunday.  Instead I surrendered to another day of allowing myself some recovery time, I got the boys outside for a walk with the dogs and I drove my son to his piano lesson and got to hear him take on and begin to play a new piece.

The other thing I acknowledged to myself today is I feel like finally taking some drastic action on the thyroid issue was a phenomenal step, it isn’t a panacea for other stuff going on, nor does it make the “to do” list evaporate, and even though I am sitting here not in the greatest physical or psychic space, I have some regret I didn’t do it sooner.

[Gabe]

#1179465

Hi Bill. Hang in there. Getting the blues sounds OK to me after a surgery, suffering from GD, and suffering a lifetime with your parental units! Focus on your boys, your dogs, and your new lease on life. Hopefully each day gets better.

Thanks again for posting…it’s powerful stuff.

Cheers,
Karen

[SueAndHerZoo]

#1179466

Thank you, Bill, for sharing the emotional part of this ordeal. Believe it or not it’s that part that is worrying me much more than the physical part. I can handle physical pain, no problem – bring it on….. it’s the anxiety and panic attacks that I fear and dread. Just this morning I thought to myself: “what if I wake up in the recovery room in a panic attack?!?!?”

Thank you also for mentioning that you have never woken up eager to embrace the world. That is me, too, and this morning I was calmly trying to remind myself that I am ALWAYS like this in the morning, and if I don’t dwell on it it will pass and I will be my pleasant, happy self in a few hours. By the way, I had a “gloom and doom” Mother so there’s probably some connection there.

Sorry, didn’t mean to get off track on your thread. Thank you again for sharing this journey…. it really is so helpful and hopefully helps you a little, too.

Patience. I think that might have to be your word for today. Patience.
Sue

[Kimberly]

#1179467

@CycleColo2013 – This is great info…thanks so much for sharing your story here!

[amosmcd]

#1179459

Hi, Bill–

Those first few days after surgery are not fun and joy, are they? I had forgotten that I had a calcium worry of my own. I felt tingling inside my mouth at the base of my lower front teeth. Was sure it was low calcium, even though it wasn’t in my lips. Even though my calcium levels had been checked twice at the hospital and were normal, and I was still taking calcium at home. I finally told myself that tingling would not go away if I took some Tylenol, but if it was a nerve tingling it would. So I did and it did. Turns out when I would stretch my neck out (like when a guy goes to shave under his chin) that would make that tingling happen. Apparently there’s a nerve in our necks that connects to our mouth. Weird.

I think by the time we Graves’ patients make a big decision like RAI or TT, we are already half insane, so what you went through actually sounds kind of normal for us-lol! Add the post-op period to that, and we are basket-cases! Even though I had a pretty smooth immediate post-op period, it caught up to me anyway.

Also, maybe not in this thread, but another of yours you mentioned the incision being tender. I’m a month out today, and my incision is still very tender and doesn’t like having anything rub against it. I try to avoid t-shirts. I only have one V-neck shirt, but I have other tops I can wear. I tried wearing a lightweight scarf, but even that rubbed when I’d turn my head. I finally got over my self-consciousness at the scar, and people have not stared or anything. And within 10 days the swelling went way down. I rub Vitamin E oil on it to help with scarring and healing. My doc also told me to do gentle massage to it three times a day for a few minutes each.

Take care, and keep posting!

Amy

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