Alive

Hello everyone. Posting from my phone now in my hospital room.

Surgery took about 5.5 hours yesterday. I didn't get a ton of sleep last night but everything's starting to come back online. Dr Book says everthing went really well. I'm walking up and down the hospital floor in this very stylish gown. It's a good thing there are no small children around because I think a look at my neck would have them screaming and running away :)

I'm on the oncology floor at Penrose which has private and recently remodeled rooms. The nurses here are outstandingly nice and helpful.

I'm back on solid foods, swallowing feels a little weird for now. I really had no desire to do anything but lay in bed until they gave me the thyroid pill. Now I'm feeling fine... as long as I keep my head pointing straight forward :). I'm getting some painkiller by IV every 6 hrs. Last night I did ask for one round or morphine (which was allowed once an hour!). Dr Book says its my call on leaving today. I might just go ahead and stay another night to be safe. I'm detached from all the machines currently which is nice.

They removed a good bit of tissue and all the lymph nodes in my lower neck. He says the thyroid itself was barely swollen and they had to kind of guess at the cancer site. It's all going to pathology now. Dr Book called mom and dad from surgery twice to say how it was going. 2 major possible complications are out of the way because I can lift my shoulders and speak fine. My calcium levels are a bit low which is common immediately after traumatizing the parathyroid glands, but the doctor thinks they should be ok in the long run.

I'm doing well all considered!

The Big Day

Everyone's been so kind to call and email. You're all the best friends and family I could ever want!

Well last night was the my last meal for a while. I went out with Mom to the Blue Star Restaurant and ate a nice meal. We coincidently saw Liz briefly... hi Liz :). No eating today, surgery is late : 1:00 and we need to arrive at the hospital at 11:00.

I was reading all these blogs about people having no thyroid hormone after surgery and feeling 100 years old because of it so I fired off an email with a bunch of questions to my surgeon Dr. Book. He got back to me this morning with a detailed reply to my questions chiefly that I'd be given a prescription for a thyroid replacement hormone with a short half life immediately after surgery. This drug is quickly removed from the body so it's ideal in the time before radioactive iodine treatments which require "hungry" thyroid cancer cells to show up well on a scan. I was really impressed by his thorough and quick reply.

My Endocrinologist will be Dr David Book's wife Dr Lori Book. She'll get me setup with the radioactive iodine treatment and the thyroid hormone level tweaking. I called and got an appointment this morning and the scheduler said the earliest appointment was for 9/22!! I told her I was having surgery today and she put me on the cancellation call list. She think I should be able to get in much sooner.

I'm still not worried, let's GET IT DONE

Oh 1 more thing: mom and I went to a "genetic family councilor" appointment yesterday. The main take away that I got was that she said that "1st degree relatives" (something like that -- meaning a parent had thyroid cancer) should be extra careful because since in the Faith family it's been in multiple generations there might be a heritable element to it which isn't typical with Papillary Thyroid Cancer. So physical exams for everyone! I also read that there's a blood test for something called Thyroglobulin that can be an indication of thyroid cancer. Maybe they can screen using that blood test? Anyway, get a physical!

Falling Apart

Geez this is getting ridiculous. As if the looming cancer treatment wasn't enough I have a gout flare up going on in  my big toe and I've got the cold! I'm pretty glad that human evolution has stopped because I would have been "selected" long ago (I remember getting strep throat all the time as a kid). Up with pharmaceuticals!

I'm going into surgery day at full blast too. I'm traveling to KS for Alison's wedding then catching a plane at DIA on the way back without even stopping in at home for a business trip to CA and TX and then Longmont, CO. Finally, I've got a project delivery deadline on the 20th. No time to for brooding this way!

I've also got an appointment the day before surgery with a "genetic counselor". They were interested to hear about the 3 generations of thyroid cancer and might do some genetic testing to see if there's some kind of genetic mutation. Kelly : you better be getting annual physicals!

Date Set

• The surgery will be on 8/25/2010
• The hospital will be Penrose
• It will last about 5 hours
• I will be admitted in the hospital for 1-2 days
• The recovery period is ~2 weeks
• The surgeon will be Dr. David Book
• Surgery will be a selective modified radical neck dissection (you probably don't want to click that link...) and thyroidectomy
• I'll have to take synthetic thyroid hormone from here on out
• After the surgery I'll get a diagnostic dose of radioactive iodine which will light up any thyroid cells remaining in my body on a full body scan (we don't want these)
• I'll get a higher dose of I131 (radioactive iodine) depending on the scan results to kill the remaining cells.

After consulting with 2 Colorado Springs surgeons : Dr. Book and Dr. Knox I decided to stick with Dr. Book who did the biopsy of a few lymph nodes in my neck already. When I found out the surgical procedure that is used to treat thyroid cancer with lymph node involvement I wanted to broaden the input I was receiving. After all I'd been referred to Dr. Book, for all I know he could have just been the referring doctor's golfing buddy. I think the state of the medical system is pretty messed up when I can get vastly more information about my LCD TV than the guy whose going to be slicing me open. The lack of data is very frustrating to me. In the engineering world I know a lot of people with the title "Engineer" and I know how widely the skill levels range so I wasn't initially very comfortable with going to a guy with the title "Surgeon" and knowing nothing more. Dr. Book answered my questions consistently with my research and didn't have the attitude that I should just get on the table and let him do his thing. His PA said that he does the second most surgeries at Penrose so he's got a lot of experience. He's a good surgeon I'm not worried.

Apparently the surgery is a lot more common and less "radical" than it sounded. There's a list of possible complications like anything but they are rare. The scar will be faint and Dr. Book gave me confidence that he can avoid most of the skin nerves to minimize any loss of skin sensation as much as possible.

At this point I'm just ready to get this over with and move on. I'm committed to coming back stronger than I went in. Since that's my goal with every malady I'm getting to be one strong dude (in other words enough with the health problems already).