Pam went in for surgery at 10:00 am this morning to have the rest of her thyroid removed. The surgeon just came and spoke with me at about 11:50 am to say that everything went well. She is currently in recovery, and will be in her room in about 20 minutes. We're planning on her being here overnight, but depending on how things go, she may come home tonight. I'll post more later.
8:20 pm
Pam is recovering well, she will be coming home tomorrow (probably late morning or afternoon). Unfortunately I had to run home to transfer kids when the doctor came in to explain how everything went. But according to Pam, he didn't really say much. He said that the surgery all went well and that they removed any tissue that would have had any cancer in it. I had assumed they were going to biopsy what they removed right during the surgery (they had said this was one reason for the surgery taking a little longer than normal) but the doctor didn't really say anything about what they found. He said he wanted to wait until they got the lab results back because he wasn't entirely sure of what exactly he was dealing with yet, and I guess he just didn't want to say something and be wrong. So we are now waiting until Oct. 27th when has her next appointment where the doctor will go over the results with her. I am assuming that we will learn at that time if any radiation treatment is necessary, but I kind of got the impression that the doctor was thinking it wouldn't be necessary. Unfortunately I don't have a lot of definite answers yet. If I have any more clarifications, I'll write more.
Pam has a very small drainage tube in her neck that will come home with her. It will be removed Monday. She really is doing quite well. She has a sore throat for some reason though. Of course, they've got her on pretty heavy morphine right now, so we'll see how things go when she gets ready to come home.
On a side note, things have been pretty crazy. For Pam's birthday she decided that she wanted to redecorate our bedroom. We have a lady in our ward that is quite the interior decorator and really wanted to help Pam with this project. She has jumped in with both feet and, holy cow, the scope has certainly gone beyond a few pictures and decor to go on the wall that Pam initially envisioned. So far we have a new bed frame to lift the bed higher off the floor, we tiled our bathroom and put beadboard up on the walls, as well as quite a bit of molding and new paint. We have all new paint in our bedroom - the fancy-shmancy kind that is all textured and, well, kinda cloudy looking - I am not a designer, I don't know what you call it, but it looks VERY nice. I'll have to post a picture when it's done. The lady doing all this wants before and after pictures to kind of get her started doing this as a business, so I'll have pictures. She has pulled all kinds of strings - a dresser from the classifieds for $50 that she completely refinished and looks VERY nice - two nightstands that she had (and says she wasn't going to use, but I'm not so sure) that she refinished and put a really cool distressed look on - they look like they are out of an antique store. We got a new ceiling fan, new light fixtures in the bathroom, a new armoire. It turned in to quite the project - and it has been on an accelerated time frame so that Pam would be able to come home and enjoy her new bedroom/bathroom while recovering from surgery. The lady (she's even had her mom over helping, along with several of her kids) has been working day and night on this project. Man, do I owe some people big time!
In the middle of this, our water heater has started leaking. Well, it's been leaking for awhile, but it's getting worse. The bottom is all rusted out. It's going to give any day now. I called a guy in our ward who sells plumbing supplies to ask him some questions about getting a new one. He indicated that I could get a good deal going through him, and he could even have it delivered. I talked to him yesterday and was going to call him today to work out the details. Well, I never got to it, then I show up at about 6:00 pm back home from the hospital and there is a new water heater in my garage. Sweet. Two people from our ward have offered to help me install it - I don't think it will be too difficult, I just need to get some time somewhere in the next few days before our basement gets flooded.
When I came home from the hospital for a few minutes this afternoon our garage was off the track, and the tension cable was completely unwound and in a big mess. So I had that lovely project to deal with too. It took me about an hour of unsuccessful attempts to rewind the cable and get it hooked back up. I finally figured out the trick and once I did it the right way it only took me a few minutes to get it back on. Of course, earlier the kids had tried to force the garage down and with the spring only attached on one side it didn't come down straight, and the rails were all bent, one wheel was off, and the holder for that wheel was all bent. All that didn't take too long to fix though. Luckily Pam was just sleeping for most of the time I was gone.
All this after a really intense week or two of football video that had to be done for a banquet, a wedding video to finish up, a big slide scanning order (which I am scanning as I write this), coaching soccer, a video for our regional special needs primary, tons of stuff going on at work, a baptism video (which was my pleasure to do, Sandy - I've got it down now and I was able to crank that out pretty quickly), lots of church stuff, and a million other things. I literally have not had 10 minutes of downtime and way too many late nights. I keep thinking of that movie "Castaway" and what it must be like to be stranded on an island with nothing but time on your hands... I am SO looking forward to our Thanksgiving vacation in St. George. We'll just relax, have Thanksgiving dinner with my sister's family at Cracker Barrel, and just hang out. I think it's going to take a day or two just for my head to stop spinning... It was actually kind of nice to just sit with Pam in the hospital room for awhile (well, not so nice for Pam I am sure!) and not do anything but feed Pam ice chips and get out of the nurses way occasionally (and order food from the cafeteria "for Pam" which I promptly scarfed down - she certainly didn't want it, just ice chips and an occasional bit of yogurt.)
Well, this is turning into War and Peace so I am going to sign off - after all, our interior decorator is slaving away and probably giving me dirty looks behind my back as I sit at the computer...I'm off to paint/unpack a water heater/mount a jewelry cabinet/clean up/try to actually get the kids some late dinner/move furniture/who knows what else.
Labels: Thyroid
