Lopping off the suspicious parts

Earlier this year, Lea was the fifth caller into a local radio show and won a “We’ll Take Half of the Gland of Your Choice” contest!  Woohoo!

Heh.

Lea had a hemispheric thyroidectomy yesterday.  She complained of a sore throat about two months ago, and this lab and that confirmed that she had a cold nodule on the left side of her thyroid gland.

We had expected that a fine needle biopsy was next, but her doctor said the calcification on the nodule concerned him and that he typically just took them out, making a malignancy determination in surgery.  (Her initial appointment with her ENT was March 31, and he said “how about April 29 for surgery?”  My immediate thought was “uh, how about 3:00?”)

Oh, goody!  A whole ‘nother month to scare the shit out of myself on the Internet!

leasurgeryThe on-the-table pathology was that it was benign, so her doctor took only that half, didn’t see anything untoward in the other half, and sewed her back up.  Something could still turn up in the complete pathology report, but it’s not at all likely.  Lea’s sore, of course, and she can’t drive for a week.  But she’s otherwise fine and feeling like herself.

Had the nodule been cancer, he’d have taken her whole thyroid, and she’d have spent an extra night in the hospital.  She’d have also had to do a 24-hour quarantine radioactive treatment in a few weeks, and (naturally) she’d have gone on lifelong thyroid medication.  We’re thankful to have avoided that path.

All of the hospital personnel were terrific, and as hospital stays go, I suspect it was about as good as it gets.  We certainly weren’t thrilled to be down there when swine flu turned up in the area, though.  We weren’t at all far from the pediatric ER.  (I did witness irrational behavior, but thankfully not on a large scale.)

Thanks so much for all of your thoughts and prayers.  They were, and are, much appreciated.

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19 thoughts on “Lopping off the suspicious parts”

  1. Yay for benign-ness.

    And, what sort of irrational behavior? Like picketing the local mexican restaurant? That sort? Your phone does have a videocam for those sorts of events.

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  2. If ‘they’ started lopping off all of my suspicious parts, there’d be little left of me. Except boobs.

    So sorry for your pain and troubles, folks!! Huggs and kisses all around!!

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  3. I actually logged on tonight to get your take on the “Schoooool’s out! For! Swine flu!” situation… the entire city of Huntsville seems to have been overrun with mobs of teens for the past two days, and I am CRANKY about it.

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  4. Hey, Suzie! Thanks for the lovin’. We’ll take it.

    Saintseester has been more vocal than I on the swine flu hysteria–kinda been preoccupied :)–but yeah, it’s been absurd. Imagine our luck at Lea being IN THE HOSPITAL when it hit. Nothing much happened, but I wasn’t at all excited about being 30 yards from the pediatric ER. The visions of panicked, hysterical, misinformed masses were all too plausible.

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  5. Give me a shout when Leah is home and safe and dry … I’d love to bring over a jug of soup or some cupcakes or something. Love.

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  6. Sooze, you’re a sweetie. Thanks so much for the offer. I tell you what I’d like even better is just to get together with all of us healthy! We keep saying we’re going to, and we never do. I’ll notify the proper devices in my life to give it a better chance this time. 🙂

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  7. Much coolness that she is ok. Hope you are all adjusting well. Call if you need anything…you know…within reason…not to exceed borrowing “Undeclared” on DVD or the like…

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  8. Dan: Thanks. She’s coming along nicely. We’ll have to figure out something I have that you can borrow for a few months. 🙂

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  9. Thanks everybody! It still isn’t prudent for me to do any heavy lifting but I’m feeling much more like myself today.

    Reply

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