John's Thyroid

On Feb 25th John went into the University hospital to get his thyroid taken out. It's been bugging him for years and this year we finally decided it reached a critical point. It's always annoying to me how the medical system works. We went into the doctor in September saying that he was having problems and we wanted to go through with taking it out. Of course then he is referred to a specialist which takes several months to get in, the specialist runs more tests, then he is referred to a surgeon, the surgeon sees him for less than 5 minutes and can tell he needs his thyroid out NOW! 2 weeks later he is in surgery after 6 months of waiting for appointments.

John's thyroid had 2 goiters growing on it. One side measured 10cm, the other 8cm and would go back and forth between hyper and hypo. His emotions and energy levels swung back and forth all the time. The last two weeks though he began having trouble breathing and eating. It was time to GO!

John got everything arranged at work. His mom flew in from Guam to help us out which was a great help. I think he was a bit nervous about the surgery but he was definitely anxious to get in and get that sucker out!



John ended up staying in the hospital for 26 hours. I never even got the chance to take Peter in to visit! As we were going down to visit John he started calling saying that he was checking out. I think they were just kicking him out! He had a hard time being told to stay in bed and go through all the hospital routines.

John took a week off of work but was talking like normal the day after surgery and eating burritos the moment he got home. He's such a quick healer!

He ended up with about a 2 inch cut in the center of his throat but it is healing quickly and the scar hides behind his shirts a lot.



We did end up getting a call after that his thyroid had a SMALL amount of cancer in it, but it was insignificant. It looked like the goiters were growing over it like a pearl trying to contain it! Amazing!