A rather cautious “wow”

Ok, apologies first for taking so long to post. To begin with it was because I felt so very rough and then life has just been madly busy so I’ve only just got round to having time to explain how things have been. Lets start from the beginning…

I was strangely not that nervous the night before the op, my Dad had booked us into a cheap hotel for the night so there was no long drive to London in the morning. We stopped for a meal on the way and watched the Arsenal game in the evening before turning in for the night. I slept well and we were up at 6 the next morning, threw some clothes on and made our way to the hospital.

Things could not have gone more smoothly and the staff could not have been nicer – what a perfect experience the whole thing was. I have been critical of the medical profession over the last couple of years and their shortcomings but this part was to be completely perfect. As soon as I arrived I was told I was first on the list so I was rushed through all the paperwork and in my hospital gown and those sexy surgical stockings before I knew it. All the staff were so warm and friendly, that makes so much difference to the whole experience doesn’t it?

I was shown to a ward of 4 beds, and given a bed next to the window and just had time to pack my things in the cupboard when I was taken down to theatre. That’s when the nerves suddenly kicked in. The anesthetist was joking around with me though and made me laugh, bless him. I had the first shot of whatever it is that makes you a bit head spinning and giggly and from then on I was fine not even minding having the camera up my nose and down the throat to check the vocal chords. Another shot of drugs and I was out…

I have vague memories of the recovery room but I don’t remember the trip back up to the ward, just gradually becoming aware that I was back. The pain wasn’t too bad and I felt no sickness, just drifting in and out of sleep. The nurses were a little concerned that my blood pressure was too low so were trying to get me to drink water and kept raising my feet up. I was feeling some tingling in my feet, hands and mouth which I knew meant low calcium so they got a doctor to come and give me some calcium. I was sick once, I’m sure more from the constant drinking of gallons of water and them raising the foot of my bed up to a mad angle to try and raise my blood pressure!

One of the surgeons came by to see how I was doing early in the afternoon and explained how they had actually found that I had hyperplasia and all four glands were greatly enlarged. They had taken out three, leaving one in the hope it would give  me a chance of living with that one functioning well enough to regulate my calcium. He was clear that this was far from a great outcome and that a simple parathyroid adenoma would have been easy to cure – this not so. I must admit to a few tears once he had gone. Partly relief the op was over, partly the fear that this was now far from over and I would not be fixed. He had talked about the option of removing the last gland and being on permanent medication for life if this did not work and I knew this was not a good outcome at all and is difficult to manage. I felt rather low.

So I stayed the night, gradually feeling better but hurting a bit more but the nurses were great with checking on me and keeping my pain meds up. The doctor came round in the morning again to see me and said blood tests were showing my calcium was a bit low but everything else was fine. He did another examination of my vocal chords with the old camera up the nose and down the throat – ew, not such a breeze this time while not off my head on anesthetic. I was sent home with a huge bottle of calcium tablets with instructions to take them when I got the tingles, which I was actually getting quite a lot of.

Ah, home again. Confused as to how I felt, brilliant that the op was over, brilliant that they had found the problem and had a go at correcting it. Yet worried that this was complicated, this might not work at all and I may be heading for a whole lot of more problems. I felt better after a bit of googling told me I had 80% chance of everything being fine – just one in five people in my position have a recurrence of the raised calcium or have the remaining gland not function well enough. I can live with those odds, they were better than I thought.

So to recovering. I had read up enough before hand to not be surprised by any of symptoms I had after the op but they were very unpleasant indeed for a while. I had awful anxiety, waves of panic that would come out of nowhere – I was told this was due to the low calcium and the rest of my hormones going a bit loopy. I was very dizzy and light headed, the anesthetic
from the operation can do this as well as the hormones shifts from the sudden change in calcium. I had terrible waves of tingling in my feet and hands and muscles where twitching all over my body – a very weird feeling. The doctor who discharged me at the hospital said my body was going to react like this, it was used to having large amounts of calcium and might react strongly but just take the calcium tablets and it will calm down.

Unfortunately I was struggling to get my appetite back and the calcium tablets on an empty stomach…well without being too graphic they upset my tummy a little. For a few days I felt very poorly and really down – this was hard work. My throat hurt a great deal, not surprising after having breathing tubes and two cameras stuck down it as well as the surgery itself – it felt like a very bad throat infection for several days. My sons were happily camping with their dad so I had time to recover quietly and my lovely family, friends and neighbours where brilliant. I had people to make me meals, keep me company and people knocking on the door with soup, cards and magazines to cheer me up…I’m very lucky indeed to have such good people around me and I didn’t take them for granted.

So I felt completely rubbish. And yet something was very different, I could think very much more clearly. Though I felt dizzy and tired, the clarity of thought was very obvious and very exciting. My ankles and feet were no longer swollen and when I walked there was hardly any bone pain left. As I got a bit stronger I noticed my walking was different too, I had lost the ‘waddle’ and was walking taller, more naturally. Wow.

From every day feeling terrible, I began to have some not so bad days thrown in. Little by little I began to feel stronger and the anxiety and tingles began to fade. My eyesight noticeably improved and I just felt what I can only describe as ‘lighter’ – both physically and emotionally.

I felt nervous going out for the first couple of times, I didn’t feel like I needed the stick any more but I took it folded up in my bag just in case as I popped to the corner shop. I felt dizzy and odd but excited that I could walk normally and oh so much quicker than before! I had to cut the second trip short when I suddenly felt awful in a supermarket but I knew I had pushed my luck a bit by staying out too long.

So it’s a cautious “wow”. Things are still far from perfect but I haven’t felt so good in years. I wake up feeling refreshed in the morning and I’m not exactly leaping out of bed but I have so much more energy. I have cleared out rooms and done more housework this week than I have in the past 6 months! I went to the shops yesterday and enjoyed just wandering around browsing, instead of just getting in and grabbing what I needed and getting out before I ran out of steam. Friends and family say they are starting to see the old me back, colour in my cheeks and a smile on my face. I can concentrate enough to watch programmes on TV and hold proper conversations with people – it’s slowly dawning on me how very ill I had become and how limited my life had grown.

I still have more energy to reclaim, I tire easily because I am over doing things now – I think the body has a way to go to catch up with the brain. I can feel my body is still adjusting, I feel odd sometimes and there are strange sensations and twitches now and again. My scar is healing nicely, you won’t even notice it soon. I go back to Hammersmith in a week or so to get some blood tests to see what is happening and I understand I will be monitored for quite a while until they feel everything is balancing itself out.

I feel it is almost bad luck to be excited at how many things have improved, it is early days and it is unknown what this last little parathyroid gland is going to do over the coming months or years. Yet today I feel good, tomorrow can take care of itself. Phew.

 

 

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