Surgery

To bring you up to speed..... We were a few minutes late to the hospital around 7am Wednesday morning due to the lovely Rt66 traffic jam..but God provided a wonderful nurse Mary Ellen to greet us and put us at ease. Due to a very busy hospital and my tiny veins (I felt like a pin cushion getting pricked so many times)things got off to a late start but then I was walked into the surgery suite. They removed my thyroid and also one para-thyroid where they could see the cancer had spread. I was finally wheeled into the recovery area about 2:30pm where I woke up to a major sore throat and feeling really out of it. They put this large wrap around my neck that they call the elizabethian collar which feels like a huge scarf ( or the cone of shame for you UP fans), it was comforting to wear but felt good to get to take it off this morning. For whatever reason they ran out of rooms so after my surgery I spent about 8 hours on a gurney until I complained so much that they brought me a bed because my back and butt were very sore. They also forgot to bring me any food so I had to beg for that also and a nice orderly smuggled me a turkey sandwich and some juice. A room never opened up so since the recovery area closed they parked me in stall #13 in the PACU suite for the rest of my stay at Georgetown University Hospital. Now don't get me wrong, the nurses and rest of the staff were awesome but not having a room meant that D, my mom and D's parents had to not only get an escort to come see me but could only stay for a few minutes at a time. I had no privacy,no phone,no TV, no belongings....thankfully the remembered to feed me on Thursday and realized my boredom and let me borrow a DVD player and a couple of movies. That helped drown out the guy who was refusing to pee in a plastic container in the curtain next to me. They needed to monitor my calcium levels every 6 hours and after it went down Thursday morning my hopes of an early discharge vanished and I would have to stay until at least 4pm. Thankfully it went back up at the 4pm blood test so I was able to go home about 6pm.........I thank God for my family and friends who prayed for me and that things went smooth with the procedure even if the hospital stay was bumpy. I go back hopefully Wednesday the 9th for a follow up with my doctor. Until then I intend to rest and recover. Think I'll go take a shower now, I'm a bit on the smelly side.