The prof comes back – with one last look at my neck and with some after care instructions but I know what to do. I’m a Thyroid surgery veteran! He seems happy with how things are going. I’m waiting for my Thyroxin – that’s the drug you take that replicates what your Thyroid function. However, no such luck! I’m not getting any! As I understand it, I’ll have to have radioactive iodine treatment in about 4 weeks and can’t have any Thyroxin in my system when I get radioactive. As I understand it, usually you take Thyroxin and then a couple of days before you go radioactive you get some Thyrogen injections which suppress the Thyroxin – something like that. Anyway, there’s a world shortage of Thyrogen right now (me and my precision timing!) so no Thyrogen means no Thyroxin. He tells me to expect to feel “a bit tired” without my thyroid and Thyroxin.
Just like other luxury hostelries, the North Shore Private also has an early check out. Seeing as the prof has already made his early morning call, by the time David comes to get me at about 8.30 I’m ready and raring to go. Discharge is straightforward and we’re homeward bound.
Once home, I assume my position horizontally on the sofa, cocooned in the doona with an ice pack on my neck and one of those circular travel pillows to support it. I’m quite a sight to behold! David waits on me hand and foot and has clearly missed his vocation in life as a nurse! I’m not on any pain medication which is great, just calcium tablets. Actually, they’re so much more than a tablet, they’re more like torpedoes and as I’m obliged to take four a day , poor David becomes the official pill cutter! I’m sure these are tablets made for the outsize oesophagus, why can’t medical manufacturers just make them smaller and make you take more of them? Is that rocket science or what?!
