Still Here

I am still here.  Just been busy and without much to talk about.  We had a death in the family last week and that has kept me distracted.

The neck is healing well.  It's been dry feeling and scabbing so the wound itself is itchy.  Still no word on the additional pathology.  I 'm not worried about it and feel it can wait until my April follow up appointment.

The baby front is slow moving of course.  As you know, we aren't trying too hard right now.  May will be the big month for us.  Maybe by then all of these medical bills will be gone.  Anyway, I am expecting AF to appear any moment now and if she doesn't then I'm going to start getting excited that maybe, just maybe we did it on our own.  We shall see. I'll keep you posted.

I'm back!

The surgery was okay.  There were some complications.  When they got in there, they realized the node was dead and had plastered itself all over.  No wonder I had experienced so much pain.  It was plastered to my veins, artery, muscle, and nerves.  They didn't feel it was worth the risk of permanent damage to remove it from areas like my artery and nerves so they left some behind.  However, they said that since it is dead, it should just fall off naturally over time.  The body will take care of itself.

It wasn't a hard recovery.  I was tired a lot and took little pain medicine.  I had to sleep sitting up which is super uncomfortable with my bad back.  My family helped a lot especially with applying copious amounts of goo to my wound.  This bacitracin application has to be done for 3 weeks, then we move onto massaging vitamin E oil into it.  Ugh.  The most difficult part of recovery?  Stupid AuntFlow decided to pay me a strong visit the morning before surgery and she stuck around a lot longer then normal.  Bitch.  Doesn't she know what's up?

The only postoperative complication I have had is numbness and painful tingling on and under my chin up through my jaw to my ear.  It's a nuisance really.  Not terribly painful, but always there and it just doesn't feel right.  They almost kept me overnight for neurology, but I really wanted to just get home.  The doctors all said they think it was from intubation and not a result of the actual surgery.  I was informed that the feeling could take weeks to go away!  It has in some areas, but still there in others.

So they sent the sample off for evaluation.  The first results have already come back.  No lymphoma, no cancer.  No we're just waiting to find out what kind of infection it was that took hold.  They also want to know if the lymph node died and was then infected or if the lymph node died because it was infected.

The scar, although 3 1/2" in length, is beautiful.  You barely notice it.  The pleasures of having a plastic surgeon ENT.  He used disposable internal stitches so it looks and healed great.  I keep getting compliments on it as if I had done the work myself.  The drain he put in and had to remove the next day because it wasn't working well left a small hole that closed up well as well.

Overall, I am feeling pretty good.  Took two weeks to be able to build up my strength and stamina to return to work.  I'm going to miss my naps!

Thanks for all your well wishes!

As for the baby making.  We will be trying naturally for a few months.  We didn't really want another Christmas baby so we are not going to pay for treatments on something we aren't feeling as strongly about.  If it happens for us naturally during this time, then it was meant to be.  If not, we will go back to the fertility doc in May.  That seems like forever.  

Surgery Tomorrow

Thank God this will be over tomorrow.  Yeah, there will be recovery, but I am just so over this Lumph!  I keep thinking that maybe God didn't let us get pregnant because this was going to happen.  So we should be good to have a baby after this is over.

This weekend has been crazy.  Family is visiting from all over.  My son broke his arm Friday after school (first broken bone, 1000th ER visit).  While babysitting our nephew, he woke up crying in horrible pain so we took him to the ER Saturday morning. Turns out he has a distended bladder.  Oh Sweet Jesus!  What is next?!?!?!?

Nothing.  Peace and quiet is next.  Please?

Oh, did I forget to mention that I am having surgery tomorrow and of course, I get my period late yesterday.  It's a week late.  Last week I kept saying to myself, either I'll get really lucky and it won't come until after the surgery or Mother Nature will play a cruel joke on me and it will come head on right before surgery.  If ever there is uncertainty, just pick the worst case scenario.

Upcoming Neck Dissection Surgery

A little bit about the surgery I am having.  This one is for those weak stomachs out there that don't want to see any surgery!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPwF1cGWjJQ

And for those that can handle it (this isn't the exact same surgery, but the same procedure)...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji8t5QKMOoA&feature=related

This one is more related.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3Zj1pHJ2Ck&feature=endscreen&NR=1

I am starting to get nervous.  I have had surgery before, but minor stuff like tonsils and gallbladder.  Eeek!  Surgery is next Wednesday.  I am starting to have weird nightmares.  I am not normally so scardey cat.  It might be awhile before I am back on here to update you depending on how I feel.  Wish me luck!

Oh, and the Lymph Node Lump has a new name created by my son.. Lumph

Lumpy

I'm still alive!

Lumpy will be leaving my life on February 22nd.  Here is the low down.

On Monday, January 30th, the swelling hadn't gotten so bad, I wound up going to the ER that night.  They did a CT and bloodwork.  They explained that it was not abscessed so there was nothing they could do for me until I had the results of my biopsy.  The additional sudden swelling was probably a result of the biopsy and showed up on the CT scan as fluid.  So they pumped with with fluids, gave me prescriptions for Keflex (antibiotic) and Percocet (pain killer).

The swelling increased more.  It was frightening.  It went along my jaw line, down my neck, around behind my ear, to the base of my brain.

On Thursday I returned to my Endo for the results of my fine needle biopsy.  He said all results were benign.  No sign of cancer.  I begged him to tell me who to fix the problem.  This was getting out of control.  He started me on steroids hoping to reduce the excess swelling in my neck.

The steroids helped in the smallest littlest bit.  The swelling down down an inch and stopped.

Friday night I couldn't stand it anymore again.  I went back to the ER.  Another CT scan showed the mass had grown since Monday.  The ER doc seemed to think that the biopsy my Endo did was a waste.  Said it was looking for a needle in a haystack, then droned on about how it might be cancer afterall and the only way to know for sure is to remove it.  He told me the lymph node was not the size of a golf ball.  He gave me the name of a Plastic Surgeon ENT.

I saw the ENT on Tuesday of last week.  He seems so young.  And he looks like someone famous but I can't place him.

Well he says that I am an interesting case.  He feels that it was infected at some point but it got out of control and hardened.  There are still small pockets of liquid in it.  It can not be drained.  He also felt the additional swelling was caused by my Endo nicking something when he was doing the biopsy and I hemorrhaged.  Could explain the extreme fatigue.

So we have scheduled a neck dissection surgery to remove the affected area.  Joy.  Have you seen one of these?  In my case, he will use a "cute little crease" on my neck to minimize scarring.  From there he will lift it all up, cut up the muscle, bypass my arteries and nerves and get in to where the node is.  He will then remove it, cut it into three pieces and send each piece off to the lab to be biopsied.  He'll then close me up and observe.  If he feels that I need a tube put in to drain fluids, he will do so the next day.  The tube will hang out of my neck and not come out until it leaks only 25 ml a day.  Which means someone in my family will have to bulb the tube out every few hours and measure the liquid.  Ugh.

Surgery has been scheduled for Wednesday the 22nd.  Wish me luck!

Update

I had a biopsy done on Thursday on what I know refer to as Lumpy.  It was a most unpleasant experience.

Two weeks ago, I had an appointment with my Endocrinologist's nurse practitioner.  While there, I pointed Lumpy out to her.  She was quite concerned about its size and consistency.  So she toted me off the ultrasound room and asked the Doctor himself to take a look at it.  He didn't like the look of it either and decided I needed a biopsy.  But first he wanted me to take a week's worth of antibiotics.

So I did and returned a week later.  Now I have had a biopsy on my neck before.  As previously mentioned, I have hypothyroidism.  As a result of this, I developed nodules on my thyroid that had to be biopsied by this same doctor.  And so I knew when he started pointing that needle at the wrong spot in my neck (at my thyroid) that it was possible he had forgotten the real reason for my biopsy was Lumpy.

I asked him and he didn't answer.  Really???  You have a biopsy needle needlessly aimed at the wrong area of my neck and I am suppose to just lay there and take it?  Guess so.  So I let him biopsy both sides of my thyroid and then he moved onto Lumpy.  Oh, did I forget to mention that my doctor doesn't do any numbing?  Oh.Dear.Sweet.Jesus.  It was painful.  I couldn't move my neck afterwards.  Ugh.  He normally has such a good bedside manner so this experience was very disappointing.

He never did explain why he biopsied my thyroid too.  Did he see something that concerned him when he looked at it with the ultrasound?  Did he want to make sure that if Lumpy is cancer that it didn't spread to my thyroid?  Was it just time for an annual biopsy on my nodule and no one told me?

Anyway, since then, Lumpy has been very mad.  He has grown so that anyone can tell he is there.  He has grown so much, that I physically can not move my neck completely and a constant pain shoots up my neck in the base of my brain giving me a migraine and also down my neck giving me pain in my upper back.

Of course, being an impatient internet junkie, I have been researching swollen lymph nodes non stop.  I don't like anything I see.  The worst case scenario is cancer.  The best case scenario is it is related to my Rheumatoid Arthritis and another form of the disease is exposing itself to me.

The cancer part doesn't scare me for the reasons it should.  It scares me because it could mean chemo and radiation.  This could mean dying eggs and waiting to conceive for 2 years after treatment is over.  Could this situation be any worse???

Oh the wonders of the body.  Do they EVER cease?