50 Ways to Leave Your Liver

Oh wait, wrong body part. That should be "50 Ways to Tell Your Thyroid to Get the Hell Out". Or "Hit the Road You Jacked Up Gland". Or even "Breaking Up Isn't So Hard To Do".

You get the idea. As the surgery date approaches (Monday!!), I'm sooooo eager to get it done. I'm not nervous about the surgery but then surgery has never bothered me. This is my third big one and I have the same attitude about it as I have the others.................................I get to take a nap!!!! Woooooooohoooooo!! They say it will take about 3 hours and I told them to take their time. The longer I'm knocked out, the better nap I'm gonna get.

Insomniacs have a different way of looking at things and we consider sleep to be a commodity more precious than gold. So knowing for sure that I'm going to be genuinely, deeply sleeping for at least three hours is a dream come true. (no pun intended) Even the pain immediately after surgery doesn't really bother me much since I know I'll have the morphine button and that'll put me right back into blissful slumber. Aaaaaahhhhh..........to sleep but not to dream. Or roll over.

I can deal with the pain because it will be the pain of recovery and not the ongoing chronic pain that I thought I'd have to live with for the rest of my life. I'm looking forward to being able to look down and not strangle myself, or turn my head and not feel the world start to spin. I'll be able to lay on my right side without my collarbone shoving further into that tender gland. And maybe, just maybe, the red triangle under my skin at the base of my throat will go away. That one is still a mystery to every doctor I've asked about it but it showed up the same time the nodules started to grow deeper and it's gotten bigger and redder with time. I've been worried because in the past few weeks it's turned purple on the edges of the right side but we're almost to the finish line so I'm not going to stress it. I'm just hopeful that it will go away with the thyroid. Most of all I can stop worrying about how busy that cancer is inside me.

I'm ready. Oh dear gawd am I ever ready! People that I've talked to in the medical profession over the past couple of weeks seem surprised that I'm so eager to have surgery, but if they knew what I'd been living with and the long and torturous journey to get to this point, I think my attitude would make more sense to them. But I tell them that I've always believed that if something causes me pain and doesn't work then it should be removed from my life. Like my first husband. {cackle} Seriously tho, I felt the same way about my hysterectomy. I had been in constant pain and nothing worked right anymore. I started thru menopause when I was 27 and by the time I was 33, I was a wreck. I was having hard periods 21 days out of 27. Talk about terminal PMS! OMG, it was a nightmare on wheels. One funny doctor decided to put me on a cocktail of Premarin and Prozac. Oh yeah, that worked. I still wanted to kill people but I was okay with it. As you might have guessed this thyroid issue is not the first time I've had to fight with a long series of doctors before finding one who believed in actually fixing things.

But the point of that story is that I'm going into this surgery with the same attitude I had then. Something inside me is broken and is not fulfilling its purpose. It's painful and debilitating and my body would be better off without it. I can live with taking a pill a day and be delighted to have another hormone perfectly regulated after a lifetime of more ups and downs than a roller coaster at Six Flags. When I had my hysterectomy, I spent the first day sleeping as much as I could and using the morphine to control the pain so it didn't tax my strength anymore than necessary. On the second day I got up, got dressed and went outside for a smoke. By the time the doctor came in, I was perched on the edge of my bed, swinging my feet and demanding that the IV be taken out of my arm so I could go home. And I did because I really, truly felt better that day than I had in years. When you've been rock-bottom sick, the pain of recovering from surgery is a walk in the park.

I'll do the same thing this time because I know that as soon as they take this time bomb out of my throat, I'm going to feel better immediately. If the cancer has spread to the lymph nodes I'll deal with that too but I'm feeling confident that it's confined to the nodules in the thyroid and once that's out, I'll move on completely cancer free. I may have a sore throat and a drainage tube in my neck but I love sherbet and yogurt as a diet and my hubby will be the one taking care of my incision for me. A week of that and I'll be back on top of my game.

I have some fabulous incentive to get back on my feet quickly with the dual build of the 1:12 Rosedale and the 1:24 Rosedale. I'm so excited about those houses that I can't stop working on them! I can't wait to see how they look when they're finished. After those are done, I'm building my own 1:12 Tennyson (which is in dry fit and completely furnished already) and the 1:24 Tennyson just for fun. I'm also going to be dressing 1:24 furniture for a new line at Deb's Minis and I'm excited about that too. Oh, and then there's the Willowcrest that I'm going to build for my best friend and a possible Glencroft for a client, plus as many of the new Greenleaf half scale houses as I can. I've fallen in love with half scale and it's like discovering miniatures all over again. I feel fresh and renewed when I work in this scale which is enough to make me want to move mountains to get back to my studio as soon as I can.

So I'll take it easy and rest and do all the things the doctors tell me to do so I can recover but I'll kick ass on this. There may be complications with the fibromyalgia and the hormonal issues of the thyroid removal (kind of like all thyroid disease symptoms crammed into one for about six weeks) but I'll deal with that as it comes and I'm sure that I'll get thru those days as well. The main thing is that this horrid, toxic, cyst-filled, negative, screwed up gland is on its way out!

In the words of Dr. Suess, "The time has come, the time is now. Just go, go, go! I don't care how." But for the sake of any sentiment for a body part that has been with me all my life, I'll include a little break up song to walk it out the door.

Take it away Muppets!!