My doctor told me that a person could live on about 1/8th of a healthy thyroid. This was a quick fact that I was given during my post op visit. To be clear, what he was saying is that even with that little of thyroid tissue left, it is quite possible to live without having [...]
My doctor told me that a person could live on about 1/8th of a healthy thyroid. This was a quick fact that I was given during my post op visit. To be clear, what he was saying is that even with that little of thyroid tissue left, it is quite possible to live without having to take thyroid replacement hormone. For me that was mind boggling…
While this post at first may seem to have very little to do with RD2, it actually has everything to do with RD2. Today is the first day I have been in the office for two weeks and everything is amazing. During our busiest time of the year our team has been delivering without missing a beat. Words cannot describe…
I had been trying to train all summer long. This year the Texas climate was not nice to us. We started our summer in June with hot, triple digit days. For any cyclist, this is just bad timing. In any case, I wanted to compliment my weight training with cardio training and the best way I could come up with was to ride my bicycle.
It was only a couple of weeks into my training regimen when I began to have difficulty with my throat. It started as a sore throat, but not so much in the back of the throat, rather, lower irritations that seemed to get worse the harder I trained. Secondly, it seemed as if I was having trouble breathing, but was quick to attribute this symptom to my allergies.
July 14, 2009. That’s the day the Hippster passed. I already had an appointment to have my throat examined by the doctor and even with the sudden loss of Chris, I went anyway. There seemed to be a lump growing in my lower throat area. By this time I was having noticable difficulty breathing while riding. We tried some antibiotics and went on with it. After the antibiotics had run their course I was back in the doctors office with the same problem, and getting more and more worried by the day. We hypothesized that this was very much an allergy issue. I was getting ready to go to Chris’ memorial service and knew that I would be riding my bike so I told my doctor that “I bet I’ll feel better in the San Francisco mountain air.” Sure enough, I felt much better indeed. There’s just no comparison between Dallas air and the air in the Redwood City area. While I had some general wheezing, the pain in my throat seemed to subside.
Returning to Dallas after that weekend I quickly found myself on a trip to Denver. Where I assumed the mountain air would give me similar relief. In this case I was wrong. It seemed that the combination of the high altitude and the lump in my throat was hindering my breathing. I can remember trying to catch my breath during a presentation when I started to feel a panic episode coming on. Anyone who has ever presented has had to deal with similar spontaneous occurrences of panic, so I chalked it up as just that.
Returning to Dallas I found myself working a lot and, I discontinued riding my bicycle because of my condition which kept some of my symptoms at bay. Then, one night my daughter, Madeline, and I went out skate boarding. She’s in pretty good shape and was pushing pretty hard on the hills. I found myself going completely anaerobic just to keep up with her. And I’ll have to admit that I was able to hold my own against my formidable competitor that night. However, when getting ready for bed I noticed a visible lump on my neck. This was oddly different because it had not seemed so big to me. Being that I’m an internet guy, a digital man, I turned to the internet (stooopid) to research what was going on. Panic started to set in.
The next morning I went to visit my family doctor. He seemed concerned. By this point in time he said that he would like to refer me to an ENT (ear, nose & throat) doctor. I asked him who he would recommend and it turned out to be someone I knew and had seen her before. As luck would have it, I was in Dr. Jordan’s office that day for a visit.
Dr. Jordan is a competitive triathelete and understands what’s going on in my situation so I felt comfortable talking to her about what I was dealing with during cycling. She examined my neck and said that I had a nodule on my thyroid. She recomended we get an ultrasound done and take it from there.
So, I had a couple of days before my ultrasound which gave me plenty more time to search the web and learn about thyroid nodules. This day in age, it’s easy to start self diagnosing, that can only lead to a more stressful situation. Looking back, this whole enchilada would have been insanely more easy if I never even typed the word “thyroid” into any google search. What’s more, most often thyroid disorders are benign anyway.
So I had the ultrasound done at Docor’s Hospital and a couple of days later I received a call from Dr. Jordan with those results. She said I had a 3 cm nodule growing on my right thyroid lobe. She calmly communicated to me that this was not necessarily serious but we needed to do some further investigation. The bottom line is that’s too big to just leave it alone, it was affecting my breathing and was just uncomfortable. She wanted to have a fine needle aspiration (FNA) biopsy performed to determine if there might be any malignant tissues present. We also discussed the fact that no matter what the outcome, I’d probably opt to have this removed surgically anyway. Otherwise I’d just keep worrying about it and go back every six months or so for more tests.
So, we scheduled the biopsy date for the Tuesday after memorial day weekend. That was the longest weekend of my life. I was just worried about this biopsy. Had it all worked up in my mind that this was not good, in spite of my efforts to stay positive. In retrospect, I believe that losing a close friend during the summer simply gave me a more vulnerable feeling than usual. Again, now that I’m on the other side of this thing, I was not as clear in the head about it as I could have been. Hindsight…
So I obviously made it through the weekend and met with Dr. Lee who performed the biopsy. And honestly I can say the biopsy was a piece of cake. The hardest part was the numbing injection. If I recall, that seemed to take forever… When he was done with the numbing I thought we were done and started to get up. Dr. Lee looked at me like I was crazy because I asked if we were done. He said we had not started yet. I commend him on the job though because from then on I did not feel anything. It was only my mind that I had to worry about… thinking too much!
Within a week we had the results. They were not conclusive. One of the issues with FNA’s is that often there is not enough of the thyroid tissue present from the biopsy to give any sort of result one way or the other. Dr. Lee also told me the best way to determine what’s going on would be to have it examined during an operation by a pathologist. Dr. Jordan and I made the decision to go ahead and go forward with the operation rather than another biopsy. As I mentioned earlier, we knew we would have this thing out anyway, and we would get a much more conclusive result during the operation. So, the way I understood it, the operation was going to go down as such; They’d knock me out and remove that half of the thyroid. While still under general anesthesia they would have a pathologist test that specific tissue. If it was not benign, they’d remove the entire thyroid. If it was benign they’d only remove that half and finish the operation accordingly.
The operation was scheduled a couple of weeks from the time of the initial biopsy result (the inconclusive one). The best thing I remember before being knocked out was some “cocktail” that made be feel as if I had no care in the world. That only lasted a few moments before I was out… and then as if I had never fallen asleep, I was in the recovery room… following the partial Thyroidectomy.
Was the pain bad? Yeah, it basically sucked. But I stayed that day, the night, and most of the next day in the hospital. Being there, you have the luxury of staying connected to the morphine which obviously worked very well for me. Going home was sort of a different story because I don’t react too well to Vicodin. So, my course of action was to just go without. However, as the pain in my neck subsided I started to have radiating pain into my shoulder that seemed to be much worse than the pain I had previously felt. After a couple of days of dealing with that I had had enough and called the doctor for help. She prescribed me some muscle relaxers and anti inflammatory meds and within 12 hours I was feeling so much better.
The most important part of the procedure for me came at the end when I was in recovery. The doctor had apparently already talked to me but I did not remember anything (she said that would probably be the case). She did talk to Melissa (my wife) and my mother (who had flown in from Ohio). The bottom line is that it was benign. The operation took longer than expected because it was very inflamed and did not want to come out so easily… But non of that really mattered. My worst fear was over. It was going to be AOK as I was given the result I had hoped for.
Now I’ve got 12 days of healing under my belt and the last several days have been progressively better each day. I’ve been able to get the dressing off my incision and I must admit it looks great. Not in a “gnarly scar dude” kind of way either. I mean it’s clean and I think in a few months will be barely noticeable. I’m feeling tight in the front of the neck as to be expected but the pain is pretty darn easy going at this point.
I’d post some bookmarks from my research but every case is different. If any of my friends ever had a similar situation I’d just give them the name of my doctor and tell them not to wait around or try to self diagnose. Having a great doctor made a huge difference for me. I know I’m high maintenance but she never made me feel that way. It’s important to know these things are usually benign but going to see a doc is the best thing you can do.
Where does RD2 fit into this? The whole way through. It’s the first time I’ve every truly taken any substantial time away from the office and the team has done an amazing job. We’re busier than we have been all year, so there’s never a good time for these things. But it feels amazing to have a professional, amazing, talented, kind-hearted team to take care of business while I’ve been away. Additionally, we have some amazing clients who have been great to work with. Super understanding. We’re looking forward to updating our website with some incredible new work very shortly to show off some new case studies. And I’m restless, more ready than ever to get back into the full swing of things.
