I've been going back and forth with the surgeon I'm working with for a few weeks now trying to nail down a date to yeet my thyroid. I'd call, they'd call, no one would call anyone, and then finally I got two options: July 12 and July 19. July 12 is my 41st birthday.
In considering these two dates, I had a few things to think about:
1. Rob sometimes works during the summer and I didn't want to interfere too much with his schedule. It's fully a two to six-week recovery time, with the first two weeks just spent on my couch watching TV, as it was with the hysterectomy.
2. I am opening the doors of my private practice hopefully in the next four weeks.
3. It's summer!
4. Perhaps the biggest, I don't want to bring this health stuff into 41. It started just a couple of months into me being 40, and I've been dealing with it literally since I was diagnosed with Lynch Syndrome in September. My goose is cooked. I don't even want to think about the amount that I've paid in copays this year, but it's several hundred dollars. I've visited doctors literally 1-3 times a week for the past eight months. I'm ready to not set foot in a doctor's office for a while (though I know that's not in my cards, because once the surgeries are done, it's time to mess with my hormones through medications and make sure that my levels stay stable, which is going to take some time, which also means visiting more medical vampires).
5. This is a riskier surgery than the hysterectomy, and until I can talk fully again (which I'm told takes some time), I don't necessarily want to be seeing clients. I caused enough of a ruckus with my clients in cancelling two full weeks of sessions and then appearing just fine afterward - I don't need to do that again with a side of "Oh also my voice may cut out from time to time. Pay no mind and also pay no mind to this incision on my neck that's going to be there for a while." (I'll be wearing lots of scarves, to be sure.) The best time for this surgery is when my caseload will be low, which is July.
So, my thyroid is coming out on my birthday. Rob thinks it's a little funny (not in a "ha ha" way, I can tell) that I'd do this on my birthday when I have the option to push it out a week. I am ready for this to be done, and I personally think that the best gift I can give myself for my birthday is the closure of this chapter. Will it entail a night in the hospital? Yes. Does that mean that I'll be spending my entire birthday in a hospital? Also yes. But, once this surgery is done, I'll finally be able to put all of this behind me - the fear, the physical stuff, the disruption in my life, and the general difficulties that I've had as a result of all of this stuff. It's worth spending my birthday in a hospital if that's what I get to leave there when I walk out post-surgery.
The page is turning, and I'm on the home stretch, friends. I can feel it coming.
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