So the goiter that I have lived with for years is now missing.
The next day after surgery I asked the doctor if he
could put them back in because I was missing them.
He said that he would have to wait until
they came back from pathology.
I said well in that case to leave them out.
History:
When Hayden found out his thyroid was cancerous it concerned
both he and Cheyenne and they told me that I had to get mine checked.
So I made my annual appointment with Dr Ian McMaster,
had the blood tests done, and then had him refer me to Dr Ahmad
(Hayden's doctor from the Peak ENT Associates).
So a week or so later I was in with Dr Ahmad. As I
entered his office I passed him and of course only guessed
that it was him since I had never seen him.
I filled out all the paperwork and his nurse took me into a room
and did all of the preliminary work. When he came in he asked
if that goiter had ever caused me problems and upon my "No" as a response
he said well "It doesn't make for very enjoyable living and will need to come out.
I asked why and that is when he had me hold up my arms and I could see what
it did to my veins. (See previous post)
He then told me that I would need to go see Dr Riddle and he
was making an appointment with him as soon as I left his office.
He then took 8 sample biopsies (4 per side) of my thyroid to check
for any cancer.
By 11:00 AM I was in Riddle's office.
He took one look at me and also asked if it had caused
me any problems, and he too was shocked that I didn't notice anything.
He then checked my ears and nose and mouth
(cause that's what endocrinologist doctors do) and then told me that he was
going to put a camera down my throat.
(Now you know the size of cameras that I am used to so that option
didn't initially sound too pleasant.)
Well he put some spray up my nose that deadened the nose,
throat, and teeth and then put this little flexible camera with a long neck
up my nose and down into my throat.
His next observation was that my thyroid was pushing on my
throat and closing it off. I knew then that I was in for surgery despite
the possible outcome of the biopsies. (Which came back two weeks later
as negative same as in 2006 when it was last checked.)
Surgery was then scheduled for November 17th.
A week later I received a call asking to have it moved to the 19th
and I agreed.
So late on the 18th around 7:30 pm I got the call
to be at the hospital at 1:45 PM the next day. I had
really hoped it would be earlier but resigned myself to having to wait.
Marie then stated that she could have worked almost the full day.
I was glad that she didn't since I got a call around 10 AM asking if I could
come in at 1:00PM since Dr Riddle was ahead of schedule.
We called Brittany to came up and help with Zoey
and she was there fairly soon after that since Alex
heard her say Grandma's and he was instantly ready to go.
Well it was good that he was because shortly after she
arrived the hospital called again and wanted me there as soon as
I could come. I was in the operating room right around 1:00 PM.
A few minutes later I was out.
SO these first three images are from the doctor
and the rest from the hospital during my stay.
He told me yesterday as he was doing his followup
before letting us leave the hospital was that my
Thyroids won the O.R. for that day. My surgery was the most impressive.
This first image shows the 5 inch hole in my throat as well as the
two sides of the thyroid after they had been removed.
He said that the vein going to my thyroid was also very large
so it had been getting a lot of blood flow.
He said he almost had to make the incision a little larger since they
were too big. He estimated on to be about 10 inches long
and the second around 8inches with the thickness around 5 inches.
I could easily see why they wanted me to have them removed.
But I really did not ever notice any problems other than
occasional pain on the right side that showed up as a goiter on the
outside of my neck. The interesting part is that it was the
small side.
When Dr Riddle was checking us out he said "Well now your
Adam's apple is centered again in your neck".
We took some images of the white board so that we would have
a record of the nurses. We didn't get one from before the surgery
which would have shown who the other key platers were in the
surgery. The male nurse, responsible for prepping me, and I came instant friends
when I discovered he told me he had just received his
WoodBadge beads Sunday. And believe it or not he is a Buffalo. We then had a pretty good discussion about scouts and our involvement in it.
This shows the incision and the drain tube coming from the incision.
I still have it in and will not get it out until Monday.
Here is a little better view of the drain tube.
The rest of these images you can skip if you like.
I just wanted them in this post for my history part
as I make the posts from this year into a PDF file for my history.
