“ A difficult case”…that would be ME.

  OK, my surgery is over and I am back home…I was very excited to get this done and pretty much had convinced myself it would be a “piece of cake”.. Dennis and I took the 5:25 AM train into Chicago and arrived at the hospital about 7:45 with time for Den to have a cup of joe. I was to report to the 5th floor for day surgery at 8:30AM and was 10 minutes early. I put on my backless gown and they started an IV..My surgery was scheduled for 10AM, and they injected my IV with some lala drug before they took me down to the OR…I barely (and I to mean BARELY) remember them sliding me onto the cutting table…What seemed like seconds later I woke up groggy with a splitting headache in recovery…looked at the clock and it said 3PM…SAY WHAAAAAT?? What the Heck happened that took THAT long.

My Doc came over and asked me how I felt..I told him “like I got run over by a truck”…and he smiled and said, “So do I”..What was suppose to be no long than 1 1/2 hour surgery turned into 4 hours…with one hour in recovery..As I found out later, once I could focus, my thyroid was a huge mess of scar tissue from my last “unsuccessful surgery”…Doc said he had never seen such a bad job, and actually said there was so much scar tissue it was like cement..He had to go very slowly to get anything done…Apparently , I was born with one of my 4 parathyroid glands INSIDE the right lobe of my thyroid..highly unusual, but it does happen..He couldn’t dig into my right lobe for fear of tearing something else, so he too the entire lobe out, working very carefully with all of the scar tissue..They sent it to the pathologist to slice and dice and see if they could find it..that will take 4-5 days. Leave it to me to be “a difficult case”.

But this time I don’t have staples, I have dissolvable stitches inside and Derma Bond tape outside…and my incision doesn’t hurt…

My only problem is that being in surgery much longer than expected…and with my horrible sinuses, I am coughing a lot of junk out of my lungs, but if that’s the worse I have I can deal with it..I’m just glad it’s OVER, and I hope the pathology report shows they got that naughty parathyroid…A good sign was that my Calcium levels in my blood went down immediately after surgery..

Well, that’s enough medical stuff…I do want to thank all of you for the well wishes and prayers for me…I am confident that I will feel much better and hope to NEVER have surgery again…sheesh!!!

On a good note, (and you know I will now interject some family stuff), we are having a mini Cave-a-Palooza here this weekend…Our Wolff daughter, hubby and 2 cubs are coming and bringing a couple friends from Zionsville..Also, our son, Kelly and his  wife, Cindy will be here..The  Heisers will be here too, but they are on kid short..Our granddaughter, Taylor, is in Spain with the Kaneland High School Madrigals for 5 different concerts in the cathedrals…How exciting for her…and all of them.

Above is the entire group of kids that make up the Kaneland High School Madrigals..Tay in the lime green t-shirt left end..and on the right is their tour schedule where they are singing…

I love that photo above of them all with the quote. Right is a few of the group, Tay second from left front row…These were all taken here before they left..

How wonderful to stand in front of the Barcelona Cathedral…Love this girl!!! I have some video of their practice but cannot seem to load it..If I do figure it out, rest assured I will post it in a blog!!!!

That’s about it for now…Time for bed….