Calci-Yum

"It'll be a snap," I said to myself as the ramp-up to my thyroid surgery came and went. Monitor my calcium levels for a few weeks, get some rest for about a week, then have a few days off to myself where I won't have to worry about any of that shit.

The spot that my thyroid used to occupy is laughing the laugh of the righteous at this present moment.

My calcium levels aren't rebounding the way the doctor would like to see. (I have a hunch it’s because of low vitamin d.) I'm taking 4,000 mg a day of calcium (AND LET ME TELL YOU, THE SIZE OF THESE PILLS IS BONKERS.), and no change. What that means is that my parathyroids aren't working yet. It's fine! They get bruised, it takes some time for them to heal. No cause for alarm. There are four of them, and I actually technically only need one. So, three could totally dip out forever and I'd be fine.

You'd think this would be the stuff that dreams are made of, right? I can eat all of the cheese with reckless abandon! I can eat all of the ice cream! Just all of it! (And trust me, I certainly am.) Also, butter! Also, oreos and milk when my throat is up for it! Just, all of the dairy that I can handle!

I've had to get blood drawn every day since I left the hospital. Except Wednesday. Wednesday I was off the hook. 

(Can we also acknowledge that I've lost two full days of my life this week? I have no idea where they went. I literally went to sleep on Monday morning in the hospital and feel like I didn't wake up until Wednesday afternoon on my couch at home. I have some fuzzy memories, but overall, it's just...gone. I find that totally unnerving.)

ANYWAY. Because my calcium is still low, when my doctor called Thursday, they were all, "you have to go again tomorrow so we can make a plan of action over the weekend and also take three pills instead of 2 of the calcium for each dose and here's a prescription to help your body absorb it." It rebounded a little yesterday but it’s still low, so I shove even more calcium in my face and go get poked by medical vampires again on Monday. I’m sick of it already and still have to do this for like another month easily.

Other than occasional tingly feet and slight brain fog, I feel great! I'm clearly healing nicely, I still have a weird voice, but I'm hoping that as I continue to rest, it'll rebound more quickly. I can breathe better, and as soon as my epiglottis starts doing its thing again, I'll worry less about choking on things, which happens almost every time I put something in my damn mouth. I've sat down and gotten a shitload of work done, and while I know that mentally I'm ready to go back to work, I'm not physically ready yet. I have clients scheduled for next Friday, and I may not be physically ready by then, and I'm mentally preparing myself for that. But in the meantime, I have a bunch of things that don't require talking, and I'm staving off the boredom by doing those things. They're a bunch of tiny things that kind of always are there, and to check them off feels nice.

I’m also starting this really awesome grief class that’s running for the next few months, and it’s coming at the perfect time because I’m teaching a grief class in the fall. But, it’s causing me to examine my own, and while I’m generally pretty good at being able to recognize when it’s my grief talking, I could always be better about it. Why am I talking about this now? There’s a MOUNTAIN of grief work that I need to do around this past year or two, all around my health, that’s right in front of me and I have basically been pretending it’s not there. I am upset and very angry that I’m going through this health stuff, and I know that it’s normal to feel this way intellectually, but not acknowledging how painful this has been for me emotionally is going to keep kicking me in the pants until I address it. I’ve dipped into it a tiny bit in therapy, but it’s the softest spot I’ve had in a really long time. As in, I didn’t know I had emotional spots that soft anymore. I’ve also been trying so hard to triage and deal with this medical stuff as it comes I haven’t been able to unbury myself enough to look at the bigger picture of the grief that I’m feeling. It has affected literally every single facet of my life, and I think I’m finally at the point where I can take a good look at the mess and see where I want to start picking up the pieces. There is no grief like the failure of your own body, of that I’m intimately aware at this point. Denial has been powerful and incredibly effective for me, but I think I’m reaching the end of where it’s helpful and it’s time to address it. Now is timely as well because I only have one more medical hurdle, and so it is starting to feel like my brain finally has the capacity to do this work. Weird, I think, because what I have internalized as the scariest part hasn’t even happened yet, and I feel like I’m handling it better than any other part of these shenanigans so far.

In the meantime as I ponder that, I’ll go eat ice cream with cheese on it for breakfast. Just kidding.

Maybe.

Let's Get Weird.

I wish I didn't know this about myself, but two weeks pre-surgery, I go a little batshit, and it happened right on cue. It was almost comforting. It's endearing, I think, but it follows a pretty specific pattern: First, I start sleeping less. Then my anxiety goes up. I get a little impulsive. I have trouble focusing and remembering things. I have my own therapy sessions that I can't make it through because I literally cannot show up to do the emotional work. (That happened a couple of weeks ago and it was REALLY special. I've never had such a disaster of a therapy session ever.)

Back in March, I was working from home and so Rob was the only one who bore witness to it. It was a very interesting time. Now, I have two interns, an office manager, and a few colleagues who are going to bear witness to it. It's not so off the chain that I can't hide it, so my clients generally don't see it, or maybe they do. What the hell do I know.

What I do know is that there have been and will continue to be periods of time where I'm barely holding it together, and at the two-week mark is where that starts. I had my pre-surgery screening and asked a million questions to the nurse about food and what I'm supposed to do about it while staying overnight when I can barely eat anything at all. (I won't be hungry anyway, but it's nice to plan.) I panic shopped on Amazon and bought things that people on Reddit recommended for post-surgery. I did the same thing in March, and it legit saved me in certain ways. I asked about front-loading calcium to maybe help my parathyroid along. I wanted to ask if I really needed to spend the night if I'm going to have to go and get bloodwork every couple of days anyway and I'm allegedly going to have a drain that I'm going to have to go home with and why do I have to stay if I'm just going to have to do all the same stuff at home except in a hospital room where I'll be woken up every five seconds and can't I just come home and sleep in my own bed. (I knew the answer was going to be no, so I kept that one to myself.) 

I have so much shit to still do before Monday that it's bananas.

I'm generally able to tolerate all of this medical fuckery. The switch flipped the rest of the way on Monday, when I was a week out. Intellectually, I know that this surgery is likely going to drastically change my quality of life for the better. That doesn't change the fact that I might have paralyzed vocal cords for a little while. It also doesn't change the fact that my hormones are going to go ALL KINDS of bananas and there will be very little I can do except alternate frantic calls between my endocrinologist and my OB-GYN Oncologist so that I don't annoy the shit out of them both. They have both told me not to worry, but we all know how that advice lands with me. I've read the articles and the data. Thyroid hormones and estrogen mess with each other. There's no way around it. I just have to put my emotional helmet on and board this roller coaster that I'm about to take a ride on for several months and know that I just have to hang on tight and wait it out because every time my hormones are changed, I have to try it for 4-6 weeks before I make any other requests. Except when I was on Premarin. That one was almost an immediate difference by comparison, and so Dr. Awesome changed my estrogen prescription pretty quickly.

But I digress. Everything will be ok, and I will be through this and home resting and recovering before I even know it, and then it's on to addressing the meningioma.

Fun fact about Marvin the Maddening Meningioma (yes, I named it. Why not have a little fun?): It was found by accident. ACCIDENT. I don't know whether to be relieved that it was found in the first place or to totally and unabashedly flip my shit. The half-red-face thing? Nope. Not caused by it. The impulse control problems and the occasional aphasia and the personality changes? Yep. Do we know what's causing me to look like two-face every time I exercise? Nope. Might it be made worse or entirely go away because of the thyroid surgery? Maybe. Her theory is that it's possible that my thyroid is pressing on a nerve that's causing it. If not, I go for a chest and neck contrast CT, and we take a wait and see approach with the meningioma, which I am not at all here for, and I told her so. I go back in 3 months for another contrast MRI to see how it's behaving, and then it's likely going to be a surgical thing. Radiosurgery is not something I'm a candidate for because of the Lynch Syndrome. Regardless, I wanted a quick answer and I didn't get one, which kind of makes me want to go outside and throw a tree.

Also, if you have an MRI taken of your brain and you're tempted to look at it, REALLY check your tolerance for looking at freaky things. I mean, REALLY sit with it before you decide to take a look if you get a copy of your imaging. I did, and I didn't sit with it and just went for it, and that proved to not be the best idea. That thing is HUGE. AND, I saw an MRI image of my face, and that's just something you can't shake. I looked like a character from those books, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. But, for now we wait and see. Which I'm super good at and by that I mean I'd stage a sit-in at Dana Farber if it meant that I could have answers faster.