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).