...and drumroll please!

i have a clean bill of health. at least from my thyroid operation. i had my blood drawn yesterday and i got the results today and everything is good! i was convinced that it wasn't. i guess that means that i'm exhausted cuz i'm staying up way too late making jewelry. and i'm fat cuz i've been eating lots of candy and snacking inappropriately. and i'm constipated cuz i haven't made granola in forever and need to up my fiber intake. and i'm scatterbrained cuz i'm a ditz. it would have been so much easier for it to all have been explained away by an under-active thyroid! :) well, i guess i just need to go back to work on myself and start writing everything down so that i can stop forgetting stuff! :)

but i have been working really hard on stuff for my upcoming show. it's at a retirement community, and i'm not sure if it's open to the public, or just residents. but i've got all of my displays. i ordered some online, and christopher is working on my necklace & bracelet displays. they're beautiful. he does such nice work. :) and i'm happy with the number of earrings i've got done, i just need to make some more necklaces and bracelets. but i don't know how many spots i'll have available on the displays chris is making. i'll hafta go count to make sure i have enough. i'm just waiting for my sign & earring cards to come in the mail, and then i'll be set! i'm getting really excited. i really love the stuff i've been making. it seems that working in the middle of the night really helps my creative juices flow. either that or the chocolate :)

my original plan was to simply duplicate a lot of the things i've already done and then augment that with some new designs, but instead pretty much everything is new! i've got a ton of pictures take already, but i've got a ton more left to do. it's rainy today, and that's usually a great day to take pics, so i'll see what i can get done today. something about the way the light difuses through the cloud cover makes for really great photos. we're also going up to our campsite, and i always get great photos up there. but we don't have electricity, so i don't know how i'll be able to recharge the camera. ever since i dropped it in the river, the battery just doesn't last as long. hopefully chris is planning on doing some work and will take the generator :)

thyroid update

i had my post-op appointment yesterday and am exstatic to report that the biopsy showed NO CANCER!!! it was completely benign, which is amazing and awesome. everything is healing well, and everything is going well. thank you to everyone who kept me and my family in prayer and sent your positive energy my way during my surgery and recovery. :)

God is SO good!

first off, thank you so much to everyone who sent up prayers and sent good thoughts and positive energy my way for my surgery. i was so covered in prayer, that there was really no way anything could have gone wrong! i had probably the best surgical team in the world. seriously! they took it upon themselves to discuss my case beforehand to decide what would be the best thing for me to make sure they saved my voice. i'd gone to the voice center and had some recommendations from the voice specialist that i really thought i was gonna hafta fight for, and they'd already taken all of that into consideration and come up with a plan that was best for me, and not just easiest for them! totally awesome!

so, needless to say, everything went fabulously. my surgeon ROCKS! if you're in the pittsburgh area and need to have a partial or total thyroidectomy, i HIGHLY recommend Dr. Adrienne Melck. she looks about 12, but she assured me she's not *smile*.

and i thought they were smoking crack when they told me that i wouldn't need anything stronger than regular tylenol after the surgery, but they were right! it's 4 days after the surgery, and i've only taken 1 dose of tylenol today! even the day after, i didn't take it every 6 hours because i simply didn't need it! WOW! i've had 2 babies, 1 the regular way, and 1 cesarean, so i know pain. this is awesome!

and i went to church and sang today, which was amazing! when my surgeon came to discharge me, i asked her when i could sing, and she told me to rock on! it felt so good to be able to sing bedtime songs to my kids. tuesday night, it was all i could do not to cry when i thought that might be the last time i could sing. my kids would definitly not understand why mommy couldn't sing at bedtime anymore. it's such a big part of our lives. i'm so grateful that i didn't have to give that up!

but my voice is tired today. they told me that it'll get more fatigued more quickly now as the healing begins. but just being able to sing at all is a blessing! i really couldn't imagine my life without it. and i'm glad that i don't have to! *smile*

...and the countdown begins...

well, it's 2 days til my surgery. i'll get the call on tuesday to let me know what time i'll need to be at the hospital on wednesday -- probably at the butt-crack of dawn. i've had all of my testing done, so now there's nothing to do but wait. and unlike childbirth, there's no joy at the end of this tunnel. and i don't have to have a bag packed *smile*. but i am hoping that my new bag from my sister gets here in time. she did kinda promise that i'd have it in time to take to the hospital with me *smile*.

once i met her, i googled my surgeon. she looks like she's 12, but she's done extensive research in thyroidectomies, so i feel a little better. and she's Black, so that's kinda cool. she's canadian, though (i think), so i didn't want to say african-american *smile*. she was really straight-forward in the consultation, and that really put me at ease. she didn't sugar-coat anything, but wasn't brusque and unfeeling either. and apparently they do a lot of these.

i also went to the voice center and had my throat scoped to take a look at my vocal cords. that was really nifty! it was awesome to see my cords working, although i could have gone without having something shoved up my nose and down my throat *smile*. but now i know how everything works, and i'm hoping it'll all work the same way after the surgery.

there's only a 1% chance that they'll nick either of the nerves that control my singing during the surgery, but there's a greater chance of jacking things up with the breathing tube, so i have to be firm with the anesthesia team about what i want, and hope that they do what's best for me instead of what's easiest for them. i can't go on disability if they mess anything up and i can't sing! *smile*

and i'm really excited cuz my mom will be here today! it's always a good time when nana's here. the kids are over the moon that nana's coming. they just don't know why. but i feel so much better knowing that she'll be here with them while chris and i are at the hospital. especially since it'll likely be all day, and not just a couple of hours. plus, what sitter would show up at your house at 5am and stay until 6 or 7 pm? you'd hafta pay an arm and a leg! :)

prosthetic vocal chords

i had no idea that i know someone who's had a complete thyroidectomy and has a prosthetic vocal chord. wow! she had the procedure done some years ago (in a military hospital, as she was active duty AF), and could barely speak for over 2 years before she was implanted with a prosthetic vocal chord. I would never have known, cuz her voice sounds fine to me. i should have asked her if she can sing with her prosthetic *smile*

but it kinda made me feel better, cuz if there's only a 1% chance of nicking one of 2 nerves that controls vocal production, then knowing someone to whom it's happened makes the chances of it happening to me that much slimmer, right? *smile*

i still need to make an appointment with the voice specialists to get scoped so they can see the condition of my chords prior to the surgery. i also tried to get my surgeon to do the procedure at Magee, cuz they've got excellent food, but no such luck. hopefully i won't hafta be there over night. if they only need to remove 1/2, as they plan, then i'll be able to come home that evening. i'll only need to stay overnight if they end up needing to remove my entire thyroid. and based on my recent ultrasound, there are no nodes in the right half at all, and the radiologist said the other side looks beautiful. my friend who had a complete removal said that she had nodes on both sides and they were exhibited very rapid growth. in the 6 months or so that i've been traveling down this path, mine haven't grown at all. every ultrasound i've had shows them pretty much the same size as they were when they were found.

...the next step...

well, it's been 3 weeks since i went off my meds, and i'm not so sure it was such a good idea *smile*. bleh. so i called and made an appointment with a psychiatrist, cuz my therapeutic team and i agree that my mental health should be cared for by a mental health professional who is more capable of deciding which drugs, if any, will be the most beneficial for me. i'm kinda nervous about it, though, cuz going to a psychiatrist means that you're crazy, right? i mean, everybody's medicated and everybody's in therapy, but the only person i know who goes to a psychiatrist is my brother and the crazy people on tv. when i spoke to her this evening, she actually asked me if i was 1) in the witness protection program & 2) had ever been hospitalized for a mental illness. there have been times when both of those options have seemed like a good idea *smile*

prozac, for all it's suckiness, is awesome, cuz it doesn't drop you into the abyss immediately -- it kinda lowers you slowly into the abyss so that you don't realize where you are until all the light has been sucked out of the world and you are in utter darkness trying to feel your way to the surface. i definitely need to be medicated, cuz i'm starting to think like my brother *smile*. we'll figure it out.

i also have an appointment next week with the thyroid surgeon, cuz they ultimately didn't like the biopsy they did of my thyroid. but if you're gonna have cancer, thyroid's the one to get. it has a 100% cure rate, it doesn't spread anywhere and it won't kill you. of course, now that i've said all that, i'll be the first to die of thyroid cancer. it'll take over my body completely and i'll have to have a complete body-ectomy. *smile* i still think i'll end up with one of those throat things like the asian guy on south park *smile* but in the big scheme of things, as long as i have some anesthesia, i don't really care what they take out. nothing could be as bad as the biopsy! (famous last words...)

OUCH!!! what pain!

so, today was a really great day, and a really crappy day. it was awesome, cuz i met up with my local street team, steel town etsy, and they are fantabulous! i'm so lucky to be affiliated with such talented crafters and such wonderful people. but after i got all hopped up on caffeine at starbucks, i had to go have my ultrasound guided fine needle biopsy of my thyroid nodule.

now, first off, "fine needle" is relative. i was imagining something akin to a acupuncture needle. boy was i wrong! it was a regular needle. not as big as something they'd use for an iv, but definitely not what i'd call "fine". but it wasn't the needle stick that sucked the most -- it was the fact that once it was in, they had to wiggle it around to collect cells to biopsy! OUCH!!! but i survived it, and the doctor took it to look at it and came back to inform me that they were fine, but he needed MORE CELLS TO SEND TO THE LAB TO BE PROPERLY LOOKED AT -- meaning they had to stab me in the throat again! &%*&$$&^#$@@!!! of course, i had my husband come with me to "hold my hand," not realizing that i'd literally need someone to hold my hand! he and the doctor both like to crack jokes to lighten the tension, but i challenge any of you to try to laugh with a needle in your throat! i could barely breathe or swallow, cuz i discovered early in the procedure that movement of the throat area causes the needle to shift more than necessary. did i mention, they don't use anesthesia for this procedure? :) apparently they used to, but they discovered that it hurt more when the drugs wore off than if they just stab you in the throat repeatedly without. i wish they'd given me the option to find that out on my own! :)

but granted, i'm grateful to know that the cells they found were fine and i don't have to have surgery or anything. they'll just keep an eye on them with a repeat ultrasound in 6 months and go from there. but it's been 9 hours, and my throat still hurts! i've gotta take some ibuprofen before i go to bed. i knew going in that there was a 95% chance that they were benign, so i wish i'd had the option to just leave them un-biopsied if i knew how painful it would be! at least they give you an epidural for childbirth! :)