Onward

Well, I certainly have a way with the cliff-hanger blog endings, do I not?

It wasn't intentional, I assure you.  It's just that things have been completely cray-cray here and I haven't been dealing with it very well.

And thanks to all who sent their well-wishes!  It helped a lot!  And thanks to Ted for gently prompting me for a much-needed follow-up to my story.

I checked in for surgery on the morning of Feb. 5, and I have to say I didn't get nervous until about ten minutes before we were ready to start, about the time the nurse came in and said, "You're next."

At that point I knew there wasn't much time left and I began to panic ever so slightly.  Visions of being "awake" during the surgery or waking up in the middle of it, or God forbid, never waking up from it. Lots of things went through my mind, to be sure.

But then the lovely anesthesiologist came in and gave me something to give me a slight "buzz," as if I'd just drank some wine, she told me.  It worked.

Then they wheeled me in, put an oxygen mask over my face, asked me to count to five and I didn't make it past three.  Surgery took about an hour and a half, I'm told.

The next thing I knew I was awake in recovery, and true to form, threw up.  You see, anesthesia and I don't get along at all, and I had warned them beforehand that I have a bad reaction to it.  Well, it seems they forgot because I threw up all over myself, and they had to change my gown and clean me off, which wasn't easy to do because I was still somewhat sedated.

Three more vomitings later and they finally decided to put me under so that I wouldn't throw up so much and some other medication to ease the nausea could kick in.  I was out for probably another four hours or so.

And here was poor Hubba-hubba, waiting and waiting for my name on the handy little television screen to change to "in recovery' which meant that I was ready for visitors.  He stayed in the waiting room watching everyone else, even people who had surgery after me, get checked out.

Yeah, he waited a long time.

He should have gone to see a movie like I told him to.

Finally they let him in to see me, and they told him that they wanted to discharge me.  Standard procedure for this operation, but still.

He looked at them in disbelief.

He asked them if they truly thought I was in any condition to go home, what with all the vomiting and being under for so long.  I could barely talk.

In fact, Hubba-hubba asked me if I wanted to go home, and I answered in a raspy voice, "Harba gabba nibba woo."

And I meant it.

I stayed overnight.

And may I just say that was the best sleep I'd gotten in probably eight months, being all child-free and sedated and all that. 

After that somewhat difficult first day, recovery from the surgery was much easier than I expected, as you don't really use your throat to function daily other than to swallow, which was not difficult.

In fact, one of the worst parts of the recovery was not the incision (which did cause my neck to inflate to large Jabba the Hut-like proportions) but the abrasions left on the inside of my lip from the breathing tube and general neck soreness from the highly awkward position they put your neck into during the hour and a half surgery.

Those and difficulty finding a comfortable sleep position for two or so weeks was the worst of it, which really is not bad at all.

So, I now have a three inch scar running across the middle of my neck and only half of a thyroid, but it's all good.

You know why?  Cause I'm cancer-free, baby, and I'll take a bunch of three inch scars to find that out for sure any day of the week.