Illness Part 2: Surgery

I woke up clearing my throat, which felt remarkably gooey.

A woman's voice fairly barked at me. "Sharon! Stop. Stop that!" Who was this woman? Why was she in my room? Why couldn't I clear a gummy throat?

As I tried clearing it again, despite being told not to, I remembered. I was in the hospital recovery room. I'd had surgery, surgery on my throat. I'd expected to feel soreness, and maybe a pull from the stitches, but instead I felt a slight twinge on the right side of my throat, soreness across my collarbone, and incredible phlegminess in my throat.

"Phlegm. Feel phlegmy. Can't breathe."

"You can breathe," the woman's voice informed me. "Your oxygen level looks good. You're speaking. You can breathe."

"Phlegm. Feel phlegmy!" This woman, I thought, has never experienced their throat closing from phlegm. Unfortunately, I have, and the only way to deal with it is to cough it up. "Can't breathe."

"Let's sit you up and see if that helps." The head of the bed started moving upward.

I opened my eyes, and kept clearing my throat. "She's starting to panic," the woman said to someone else, asking them to call a third person. "I'm going to give you anti anxiety medication, OK? It should help calm you down."

What will calm me down, I thought, is being able to clear my throat.

"Does that help?" she asked.

"No. Not really."

The man she'd called came and listened to me breathe. "I hear some wheeziness. I'll get some albuterol," he told her.

"I didn't hear any wheezing," she said, rather defensively.

I'm asthmatic and phlegmy, I thought. Anti anxiety meds won't help either of those things.

The man brought over a mask and clamped it over my nose and mouth. After a minute or two, both he and the nurse next to me started asking, "Is that better?"

"No. Not really." They had ceased telling me to stop clearing my throat, which was a good thing, since that was the only thing that actually helped. It did seem that being upright was better than lying flat, too.

I cleared my throat to the point that it felt reasonable. It's probably irritation from the breathing tube, I thought. The surgery was supposed to take a minimum of two hours.

My surgeon came by my bed. The first thing he said to me was, "It was larger than I thought – much larger. I had to dig down behind your collarbone." I nodded. I'd expected that from the soreness; in fact, I expected to bruise. Still, my second thought was, "LARGER? How could it be any larger?" It was already apparently The Gland That Ate Cleveland. In my surgeon's office prior to surgery, he'd told me that I had "a minimum of 50 times the normal mass" in my neck. How much bigger could it be?

My surgeon had allowed twice the usual time for a thyroidectomy, but it turns out that I took about an hour longer than predicted anyway. "Are you in the Guinness Book?" people tease me. "Is it on display in a jar somewhere?" If it is, and my surgeon is a keynote speaker at some conference, I don't think I want to know.

My neck itself wasn't sore, as I thought it would be, but there was a pull on the right side when I moved or turned. It turned out to be the surgical drain, a piece of clear tubing extending down to the little collection jar housed in the pocket of my gown, a different gown than I'd had on when I went into surgery. I'd noticed that my pre-surgery gown had a large absorbent pad across the chest; it reminded me of a feminine pad. I was sure that the gown was now too gory to wear. My new gown was fabric, whereas the old one was paper. I didn't mind looking at the tubing, despite its being filled with blood, but I did find the concept of a surgical drain creepy. I'd move and it would pull, and I'd find myself thinking, "I have a drain in my neck!"

My family was waiting for me when they wheeled me out. My daughter saw me going down the hall and said, "Dad, I think that's Mom." I tried to call her name – "Terry Anne!" – and realized that I couldn't raise my voice. The scratchy, growly voice I had apparently only had one volume.

One of the beauties of family is that they know you. They stayed for about half an hour, long enough to be sure that I was lucid, in no pain, and cheerful enough, and then they left. My mother had said to me that morning, "You know that I'm not coming to visit, right?" I'd had to turn down the offer of a friend to sleep in my room with me. When I'm sick or in pain, I want to be alone. My entire plan for the hospital was to sleep as much as is humanly possible. My family knew that solitude was deeply appreciated.

"You think you're going to be able to sleep?" a nurse teased me. "We're going to keep waking you up. We're not going to leave you alone." I knew that, but I planned to try, anyway. I'd brought my favorite hand stitched quilt and a pair of earplugs. My doctor had promised only one night in the hospital, and I intended to hold him to it.

It's hard to sleep when you have that number of tubes and monitors. On my right arm, there was an IV. On my left was an automatic blood pressure cuff that went off roughly every half hour, and a blood oxygen monitor. On my legs were compression stockings and leg wraps that inflated and deflated every two minutes, left leg, right leg, left, right. At first, it's almost like a massage, and then it gets really irritating. Plus, I had a huge, six inch square bandage on my neck, and the tubing (I have a drain in my neck!) snaking out from underneath it. Trying to sleep was interesting, but it was my top priority.

My adorably perky nurse wrote my schedule on the wipe off board on the wall. It said, "breathe deeply, rest, walk," with little boxes to check off when I accomplished something. That was a schedule I can handle.

About 9:30 that night, I phoned my house to share my latest accomplishment." I went to the bathroom by myself!" I told my 24 year old daughter in my raspy, post operative voice.

"That's greeeeaaat, Mom," she said, in an indulgent voice that said she was wondering how many drugs were still in my system. Hey, when you've been cut open, spent hours on the operating table, have a drain in your neck and are surrounded by whirring, beeping machinery, you celebrate every small victory.

After several hours, I resisted ripping everything but the IV out by myself and called the nurse. "Can I get all this stuff off?" I asked.

"Well, it might have to go back on later," she said, but they all came off. Relief! I actually got to sleep for about 3 hours at a time.

I left the next day, relieved to be on the way home to my own bed, and to be able to go to the bathroom without dragging my IV pole with me.

Friends ask me about a diagnosis. "Cushing's? Grave's?" "Why did this happen? What caused it?" my big sister wanted to know. The truth is, I have no diagnosis yet.  Now comes the work of seeing a specialist, regulating the medication I'll be on for the rest of my life, and figuring out my new normal. I'm not sure I'll get a diagnosis.

"You'll be miserable for a while, and then you'll start an upswing," the surgeon told me before the operation. I never actually got to miserable, which is exciting. I think it bodes well.