Attack of the Killer Thyroid

As of 4:00p.m. Thursday, I was officially free of my monstrous thyroid.  My surgeon was AMAZING.  My thyroid had actually grown around my esophagus and pushed it out of place.  One of my main nerves had also become trapped in between two growths that had grown around it.  The surgeon was surprised at the size of it and what damage it had been doing when he got in to take it out, but 6 1/2 hours later, Dr. R had freed me from the attack of my killer thyroid.   The surgery was only supposed to be 3 hours, but because of the size and complexity of how it had grown, and also because Dr. R. knows I'm a singer and wanted to save my voice, he took the greatest care and the good news is that my voice should be just fine - hooray Dr. R!!!!  

So now, I'm on the journey of a slow recovery.  It's been harder than I anticipated.  I only spent one night in the hospital, because I was determined to get out of there as quickly as possible.  I have the world's tiniest veins, so getting stuck over and over every two hours for blood was getting old really fast.  Unfortunately, I was back in the ER yesterday because my calcium level is too low.  It's complicated, but basically you need a lot of calcium after this surgery to keep from having a heart attack.  I didn't have a heart attack, but a lot of other really scary stuff happened, but after a couple of hours, they released me with more medicine.  So I'm up to 6000 mg a day, which is really hard on my stomach (no details needed for that) so please just be praying that my body can adjust to no thyroid and these large amounts of calcium I have to take.  I had to go back and have more blood drawn today, but if everything goes well, I won't be back at the doctor until Wednesday.  

Thank you thank you thank you for your thoughts and prayers.  I'll write another update in a few days:)

-Kristen