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"You hungry"

"not really. just tired"

So, I slept.  Crashed more like it.  When I awoke I found that my best friend had been to the grocery store and purchased frozen smoothie mixes, ice cream, doritos, oatmeal cream pies, and pretty much any wonderful food I could imagine.  When you're not hungry, but you need to eat, it helps to have your favorite junk foods on hand!  My husband and my best friend were wonderful!  They fed me, entertained me, and helped me walk to the restroom (didn't want a repeat of passing out after I sat and stood too quickly when I had my wisdom teeth out).

The days all kind of blurred together.  I sat on one spot on the couch and watched movies with my head leaned back on a pillow.  I read magazines, ate oatmeal cream pies, and drank chocolate milk.  The chocolate milk was actually great for taking the horse-pill antibiotic I had to take--it was gigantic and DISGUSTING!  I would burp up the flavor of dirt or rotten lettuce or something hard to describe every time I took it.  I really didnt have to take any pain meds, though as there really wasn't much pain...just extreme fatigue and dizziness. 

The fatigue and dizziness came from not having a vital hormone producing gland in my body anymore, and not being able to take the synthetic drug to replace the hormones produced by said gland.  You see, you have to let your hormone levels get to a certain point (TSH 30) before you can take the Radioactive Iodine (RAI) pill.  That way any leftover thyroid tissues will absorb the RAI and be obliterated so as to prevent recurrence of the cancer.  So, during the wait for the levels to rise, you become more and more "hypothyroid."  When my doctor first diagnosed my hypothyroidism, my TSH was at a 9.  The normal level is between like 1 and 4 approximately, just to give you an idea of how high a TSH of  30 really is, and how terrible you feel when it gets that high. 

The next day my mom came to visit and care for me as well.  I woke up in the morning just shivering from head to foot.  I couldn't even bear to eat a dry piece of bread.  My mom and my husband sat on the corner of the bed staring at me, not knowing what to do.  My entire body was shaking uncontrollably, much like it had right before the surgery.  I still do not know why I had that little episode that morning, but I am guessing it was just nerves or a reaction to a med. or just the aftermath of the surgery.

I pretty much slept through the entire day.  I ate a little more after I rested, but I noticed something weird about my hands.  They kept cramping up.  My thumb would pull by itself towards my hand.  I thought it was just the high TSH but I was wrong...later that evening I was in the emergency room for three hours because my body was going into tetany...or cramping due to extremely low calcium levels in the blood from damage the parathyroid gland.

I was terrified!  My Blood Pressure was high, I had a make-shift IV in my arm, the freaking nurses in the ER had me laying in there for hours while they ran blood tests.  This whole time, both of my hands were clenched in tight fists that I could not open.  My entire mouth and jaw started to tingle like it was asleep, and I was just a nervous wreck, literally shivering in fear and saying Hail Marys to try to calm myself down.  Finally one of the nurses gave me a shot of morphine, then when that didn't do much good, a sedative.  He kept saying it was just tension causing my hands to cramp and that I just needed to relax--no, actually it was a life-threatening state of tetany.  When I woke up from the sedative my hands were released and my husband told me that they had given me an IV of Calcium and Magnesium and had alerted my endo. and my surgeon of what happened.  Later, my endo. told me that I could have died...information that would have been useful to know so that I would have known to take some calcium on my own!  I finally got home at midnight and would have to take 9 calcium tablets a day for the next week plus a prescription for Vitamin D (Calcitriol). 

I am just so glad that I had time off from work and several loving people to help me.  I can not imagine having to go back to work on the following Monday of my surgery.  My endo. said that after a surgery on a Thursday, some people go back to work on Monday...I needed a full two weeks to feel "normal."  Guess I'm a weirdo!