Thyroid Surgery Hospital images

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.