I'm Clean!

The lymph nodes are clean! 80 lymph nodes were tested and came out clean. The cancer seems to have been confined to the thyroid area and did not invade anywhere else. That is amazing news! We got the report on Thursday. I think it was Thursday. I know, you would think that particular day would be etched in my memory, but I lost approximately 24-30 hours in a fog. I will explain. I also want you to know that there is a picture at the end of this blog which is a very discreet ( did you know that there are two similar words, discrete and discreet?) picture of how I look right now. I am being very careful not to upset anyone, my own son is squeamish so I have been very respectful of that here. I promise you can handle it, but it really does show you how I look right now.

Anyway, on Tuesday night we had quite the adventure, I was sitting at this computer checking email, blogs, and bargains, and for some reason I rubbed my hand down my neck. I have not had much feeling there so I was not sure I was feeling what I thought I felt. I jumped up and ran to the mirror to discover that my fear was true. Above and below the incision line I seemed to have a huge donut sitting around my neck. (That is not what the picture shows, I told you I am being discreet) I immediately told oldest son to call husband to leave his meeting and come get me. I don't know why I did not have oldest just take me to the hospital, although he would not have raced quite as fast.

Husband arrived and we got to the local ER just as my airway was starting to close. I was actually hysterical as I ran in the hospital pointing to my neck, crying and telling them I could not breathe. Mental note: that is how you advance your position in the ER. It felt like a scene from TV as they prepared to intubate me to send me on to the big city hospital. That is where my fog began. Thankfully they decided to knock me out for that . Over the next 30 hours or so I remember very little. Including emergency surgery to relieve the swelling.

I am home now, sore again from a second neck surgery and still have swelling, although this is the normal "I just had surgery swelling". It was while we were there though that the pathology report came back to let us know the good news.

The reason for the bad swelling is because of the heart drugs I went back on after surgery. Thin blood does not promote good healing after major surgery. Even though I was off of it the recommended time prior to surgery, I should have been off afterwards as well.

Okay-- because I know there are some of you dying to know what I look like, here goes....