So here's the whole long story of my recent thyroid surgery.

At the end of June, I went to the doctor for a checkup. About a week before that, I had noticed a lump in the right side of my throat. Having had siblings with thyroid issues, I assumed that it was something with my thyroid. So, at the doctor's office, she said that it was enlarged and that I would need to have an ultrasound. So that took place about a week and a half later. To my surprise, I not only had one thyroid nodule, I had six of them of various sizes on both sides of my thyroid. Officially, I was diagnosed with a "multinodular goiter." I thought goiters only happened in parts of the world where people didn't get enough iodine. But I learned that the word goiter refers to any swelling of the thyroid. I was sent to a surgeon who does most of the thyroid surgeries in town for further consultation.

I learned some surprising things at the surgeon's. He told me that 50% of women age 50 or older have thyroid nodules, even if they are not aware of it. And the vast majority of them are benign. To determine if mine were benign or not, I needed to go have the "most worrisome" two of the nodules biopsied. They wouldn't do both of them at once, so that took two more weeks. Then the surgeon insisted on sending them to Mayo, since it can be very hard to determine when the cell sample is so small. That took two more weeks. Well, it turned out that the one on the left was clearly benign. The large one, the one I had felt on the right, turned out to be a kind that cannot be determined without being able to thoroughly examine it and see if it is invading the thyroid or just pushing thyroid tissue aside. So, I needed surgery. (And by the way, I was seeing a surgeon. I would have been kind of surprised had he NOT said I needed surgery.)

With all the things we had going on and with Rene's busy work travel schedule, the soonest I could fit a surgery in was three weeks. When I called to schedule it, it turns out that the surgeon was out of town for two weeks then. So it was scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 13.

Despite all my worries, the surgery itself went very well. I'm not a fan of anesthesia, but I really didn't experience any after effects. The official result on the nodule was "benign, consistent with Hashimoto's thyroiditis." So pending anything further on the final report from the pathologist, everything is good here.

I'll admit that I worried some, but for the most part, I was able to forget about it for long periods of time. The Sunday and Monday before the surgery were the most tense.

Here are pictures of what my throat looked like the day after surgery and what it looks like now, with the big gauze pad off. I think it looks pretty good, but the scar really has been one of the least of my worries.