Life After Thyroid Surgery

You think to yourself that having a small thyroid taken out can’t do much harm, but thats where you are wrong. You come out of surgery feeling numb and that’s because your parathyroid glands have been traumatized by having them moved around so they could cut your thyroid out. Then you have to deal with a drain sticking out of your neck for 24 hour while the fluid drains from the incision site.

And if that isn’t bad enough you have to deal with the constant ups and downs of your thyroid levels. Watching your weight rise and the mood swings and then there’s the constipation. Your body depends so much on your thyroid to regulate so many other body organs.

And then there is the waiting to find out whether you have thyroid cancer or not. My surgeon didn’t bother to tell me until a week later. And then there was the doctors indecision as to whether to treat with radiation or not. You would think that after going to medical school that they could make a decision, but its the patient that is left hanging.

Life is just not the same after having your thyroid out, your body cries out in pain day after day. If its not joint pain its feet pain or knee pain or nausea or some other problem. It gets to the point your so depressed from waking up with pain that you just want to scream at the doctors for not sitting you down and telling you the truth about how its really going to be afterwards.

Life for me has not been the same since my thyroid surgery and doctors just send you from one doctor to the next for another diagnosis of something else that has gone wrong because of the thyroid being taken out. My symptoms began shortly after surgery they include ocular migraines/blind spots, Vitamin D deficiency, calcium deficiency, Vitamin B12 deficiency, high nor-epinephrine levels, GERD, right paralyzed vocal cord and floppy left one, choking upon swallowing, loss of voice, coughing, feet pain, knee pain, leg pain, stomach pain, diarrhea, constipation, Livedo reticularis, tinnitus, weight gain-weight loss, arm weakness, leg weakness and it goes on and on.

It literally ruins your life, you are never the same afterwards. I tried getting out and mowing the lawn with my husband and my face turned beet red. The neighbors thought I had a sunburn, but no it’s just because that’s how the body reacts to sun being hypothyroid after surgery.

And then there is the heart palpitations from the thyroid meds and the thyroid dosages being changed every four weeks for months until they finally get you regulated and the never ending bloodwork. Does it ever end, no. It has been 8 months since my thyroid surgery and the bloodwork every 4 weeks still hasn’t stopped. My Tsh levels still have not settled down yet and they are on the rise again.

You think everyday why did I let them do the surgery, could there have been another way to deal with it? No, there couldn’t have been another way. You have to accept that your life will never be the same after thyroid surgery and that is just the hard truth. I have talked to other men and women that have had their thyroids out and I hear the same stories, some worse some better. Some people are lucky in that they haven’t had any major problems but those are the few.