bless me!

Just had my first post-op sneezes that didn't hurt.

I've spent most of today wondering how it is that I actually feel OK. Many possibilities spring to mind:
- the power of positive thinking?
- massive adrenal compensation? [Pantothenic acid supplementation for RA doing double-duty here?]
- the tiny bit of hydrocortisone supplementation I'm getting via absorption, as I try to soothe all my itchy patches?
- delusion?
- excellent nutritional support?
- getting a relatively decent amount of sleep?
- not trying to do to much? (Nah, that one's out)
- all the prayers and well-wishes and good thoughts everyone is sending my way? (definitely helping)
- all the prayers (not to mention arguments) I've sent to the Lord myself?

I don't know, all I know is, when they tested my TSH today it was all the way up to 74, which is 74 times higher than it should be, and I actually feel... OK. I get tired. If I stand up too fast, I fall over. My blood pressure this morning was 84/56, and they had to stick me 4 times to get 1/3 of a tube of blood to do the rapid TSH.

All signs point to me being completely non-functional, and yet, here I am.

I don't understand at all, but I'm profoundly grateful. I keep warning DH and the kids that I may suddenly become completely non-functional, as in, unable to do anything beyond sleep. I thought that maybe today, I could see the wall approaching. But I rested for an hour this evening, and after that got up and ate a good supper, then I did some laundry, took a shower, and watched some bad tv, and now I'm here.

Here's the scoop: Monday morning I'm meeting the nuclear medicine doctor at Good Sam, and he'll review all the precautions with me. I'm hopeful I may be able to stay home, or at least avoid a hospital stay by getting a hotel room... it may be the guest room will work out just fine, though. Yay! That would be awesome. I suppose I shouldn't get my hopes up. But I am relieved because Yolanda assured me, "They are working [me] in" and they WILL get it done next week. Yay! again. Sorry for the unseemly and repetitive enthusiasm, but man do I want this to be over in time for Thanksgiving.

Saw Dr T this morning and while he thinks I just have a minor infection thing, he did order a soft tissue ultrasound of my neck just to be sure there's no cancer in the swollen glands, and I'll get that Monday afternoon if I can still swing it. I'm also on Zithromax, a prescription I filled at the new CVS, which was a sweet deal because they're trying to build business so they're handing out $25 gift cards for new rx's...hee! Free money? Sure, anytime. Thanks!

DH is on tap to bring me to Monday's appointments, and the babysitter is all arranged for the afternoon, too. Now if I can just get through the weekend...

I actually cleaned off the kitchen counter this afternoon, too. It was completely covered and just looking at it made me want to run away, but instead I confronted it, even though I really felt as if I didn't have the energy to do it. But I did, and when I was finished I felt so much better. I got the family room picked up, too, and finally took the tags off the cubes and cylinders: now we have to keep them! Alas, I can't threaten returning to the store anymore when the kids get too rambunctious with them. They love those things! Great purchase. They do everything I wanted them to, plus they are great toys, which I didn't foresee at all, though I don't know why. Just didn't think of it, but now that I see how the kids love them, too, I don't know why we didn't get them sooner!

Perhaps the biggest downer today was reading through the surgeon's operation report. The lovely Yolanda told me to bring my records with me on Monday, so I called over there to have the staff fax it to me. It was a pretty nasty operation, that's for sure, not a typical thyroidectomy at all. The surgeon even had to resect some of the muscle in my neck because so much of the mass had fused together. But he managed to perserve the parathyroids and the nerves, the most important things, and cleaned out what he could of the mess he found in there. One word you do not want to see in your operation report is "ominous," let me tell you. Reading through that report made so grateful (again) that I had such an experienced surgeon. A less experienced person would've had a lot of trouble in there, I think. And then where would I be?

Well, I'm here, and I'm off to bed, utterly amazed at everything (what is it, the brain just doesn't want to cede the floor or something?) that I was able to do today -- 2 doctor's visits (well, 1 doctor, 1 labs), driving up to Phoenix and back, shopping at CVS, picking up DS1, helping DD with her new Barbie computer game, managing the kids relatively well considering (my temper has become the quick-flaring, quickly-dying-down type, which is way weird for me), laundry, shower -- and I even wrote a reply to a woman who is facing her own thyroid cancer surgery this week and wrote to me to tell me this blog is a help to her. That was a good feeling.

Of course it is therapeutic to me, that's the whole "Oasis of Sanity" angle. I realized that some people might put an arrogant spin on the title, and think that I think I'm the only sane person writing on the web or some such nonsense -- nothing could be farther from the truth. It's me, my life, that is crazy, and this place is an attempt to carve out one small space where I can breathe and try to make sense of everything...

I did a very little work on my book today. Perhaps tomorrow I can do some more. I'd like to get it put together soon so the kids will have it next week while I have to hideaway, where ever that ends up being.

I admit there were several times today when I felt as if I was hanging on by a very thin thread, but those times passed. I feel stable. I feel supported, even though I do feel a bit crumbly around the edges.

Oh, yeah:
Breakfast: ginger/peach tea, the last 2 pieces of the chocolate cake
after breakfast, I realized I've been eating too much fiber or maybe I didn't need to add that extra cal/mag/zinc, because my digestion was moving a little faster than I like it to... but it did settle down quickly, too.
Lunch: the rest of the leftover chicken... what else? can't remember. I know I had 2 muffins and some cranberry tea. Maybe that was first lunch, and 2nd lunch was the chicken. I think that was it.
Dinner: big salad with romaine, cukes, tomatoes, o&v&s&p. Then some roast pork and the rest of the roasted carrots. I finished way too many things today. I'm running out of prepped stuff to eat! Horrors. Need to buy more chicken tomorrow!
Dessert: 2 squares of chocolate
Snack: handful of pecans, more cranberry apple tea.

Hands again sore in the AM, but it was a cloudy sort of day, and they never really bothered me once I was up. They appeared a tiny bit swollen, but there was no heat in the joints.

The itchiness does seem to be responding to the hydrocortisone cream, thank goodness, otherwise I think I would've scratched my back raw by now. It's weird because my skin is not as dry as I expected it to be at this point. It's definitely drier than usual, but it's not flaking off or anything. I credit the EFA supplements, and I'm glad I made the effort to find one that's complete without a fish oil source.

I felt a little chill most of the day, even though I was wearing a t-shirt under my favorite cashmere pullover (soooo soft & warm), but after my rest this evening I felt warm, and it's only now as I'm sitting here typing this with still-damp hair that I'm feeling a bit chilled again. So it's time to get off and go dive under the covers, and pray to get through tomorrow as well as I did today... which was a bona fide miracle, as far as I can tell!