Christmas Lights
Posted on December 24, 2012 by Ching under Things to Do.
Brian and I enjoyed looking at Christmas lights with mom last night. We only went to a couple of houses on the East side of town before heading over to see Lights on the Lake because we didn’t really want to stay out all night.
The Christmas light displays are quite impressive.
Lights on the Lake
It was a popular night for looking at Christmas lights. It seemed like everyone had the same idea. If you haven’t gone out to look at Christmas lights yet this season, I highly recommend checking out YuleFinder first. You can be more efficient by using the web site to save all of the light displays you want to see and mapping your route first, or you could just follow one of the many busses offering light tours around town. We were almost tempted to do the latter last night since we didn’t have a route pre-planned. LOL. Thanks for coming to look at Christmas lights with us, mom!
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My First Burger and My First Meals in General
Posted on December 22, 2012 by Ching under Family, Food and Drink.
Today I had my first burger (well, half a burger) since surgery when we took grandma to Freddy’s for lunch. I’d forgotten how delicious their burgers are. And you all know how much I love their shoestring fires.
As you can tell, I’ve pretty much resumed eating regular foods. Actually, I started eating regular foods almost immediately. I bounced back from surgery pretty quickly.
I was afraid to eat on the night of my surgery though. I remember that Darcy puked out her first meal after her surgery. I really didn’t want to have to go through that. It hurt enough to cough. I’m sure vomiting would be much worse.
Mom came over and brought sinigang na baboy, my most favorite Filipino dish. I could only eat the broth. I had a little bit of rice with it but, despite not having eaten in almost 24 hours, I was done after four or five bites. I was starving when I woke up the next morning and ate the rest of it then, throat be damned.
Brian made me some chicken noodle soup later that day. Thanks to Tiffe, Sunni, and Carmen for thinking of me and getting me a couple of soup mixes. I would have been drinking protein shakes the entire time otherwise. These soups — I’ve tried the chicken noodle and the broccoli cheddar — are delicious, by the way. Tiffe told me that they got them from Great Harvest but you can order them online too. As a matter of fact, I’m thinking of getting some more. They’re that delicious!
Speaking of, I have the best coworkers in the whole wide world. They got me this beautiful bouquet that smells just as good as it looks. I also got this lovely bouquet from Pat at Wheels. She is so thoughtful.
Anyway, I feel very blessed to have such wonderful people around me. Brian was the most awesome of all. He has and continues to take good care of me. I can’t imagine going through this alone. I think I might have starved to death.
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Thyroidless in Wichita
Posted on December 22, 2012 by Ching under Health.
Guess what. I survived the Mayan apocalypse. Unfortunately, my thyroid didn’t. Oh, well. Although, when the zombie apocalypse comes, I’ll fit right in. My scar still looks pretty wicked. I’m glad I went through the surgery, though.
When we met with Dr. Sunderland, he told us that they found carcinoma in my thyroid. It’s so small — the size of the tip of a ballpoint pen — that it wouldn’t have shown up in any biopsies. Had I been stubborn and continued to insist on saving my thyroid, who knows how much it would have spread and what other health problems I would have experienced as a result.
I may be thyroidless but I feel like a million bucks. Looking forward to a speedy recovery and a long, healthy life. ¡Salud!
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Killing Me With Calcium
Posted on December 22, 2012 by Ching under Health.
For those of you guys who were wondering how we ended up spending the afternoon at the ER last Sunday, here’s the story. BTW, I would have posted this sooner but it has been a really busy week.
Following my thyroidectomy, I was on a schedule of Cytomel twice a day — at 4 am and 4 pm — and then Calcium three times a day — at 8 am, 12 pm, and 8 pm. I had a prescription for Lortab which I didn’t touch because Tylenols were sufficient to keep the pain at bay. I think I only took 5 Tylenols total. I didn’t really need any pain meds because I wasn’t in any pain per se. Mostly I just felt discomfort. The way I described it to Brian is that it was like my neck was sore from a really good workout. I’ve never really needed pain meds a day or so after a really tough Group Power or Boot Camp class so I think that’s how I got by not needing pain meds after surgery. I kept joking that it’s because I’m part Viking but, in reality, I think it’s just ’cause I’m used to being sore all over.
Oh, and contrary to what ya’ll are thinking, the trip to ER last weekend had nothing to do with the “vaginal rest” post on Facebook. It mostly had to do with the Calcium. Well, that and the chest pain that I felt when I woke up on Saturday morning. It actually caused me more discomfort than my neck/throat and I couldn’t get it to go away. It didn’t help that Brian realized that I was overdosing on Calcium. The doctor had prescribed about 300 mg of Calcium three times a day but, when Brian went to the pharmacy, they sold him over the counter Citracal, which they told him was the same thing. Brian looked at the bottle which said the recommended dosage was only twice a day. Upon closer inspection of the bottle, we realized that the Citracal contains 630 mg per tablet. So I was getting twice the amount of Calcium that I really needed. We were both worried that the excess Calcium was what was causing me chest pain.
When I woke up on Sunday morning, the chest pain was still there so I called the doctor. Dr. Sunderland wasn’t available, but the nurse said she would page the on-call doctor. By noon we still hadn’t heard back so we called again. This time the nurse told us that the on-call doctor recommended that we go to the ER, so off we went.
After getting poked and prodded (again), blood tests, an EKG test, and x-rays the ER doctor determined that I was fine. The chest pain I was feeling was just normal discomfort following the type of surgery that I had. And we didn’t really have to worry about overdosing on Calcium because your body just expels the excess minerals in your urine. Your body takes what it needs and you just end up peeing the rest of it out. Who knew? Well, I think maybe I knew that already but the chest pain was clouding my judgment.
I wish we wouldn’t have panicked because we ended up spending almost the entire day at the ER. We were there for almost 4 hours. They had some emergency situations come in around the same time that I was there and, since I wasn’t bleeding or unconscious, I was pretty much put on the back burner. But whatever. It’s not like I had anywhere else to go. I couldn’t go to Zumba because I’m not supposed to workout for a while. My Sunday was wide open.
Anyway, I met with Dr. Sunderland on Tuesday to get my stitches out and we went ahead and brought the paperwork from the ER on Sunday. I’m glad we did because they used that information instead of drawing more blood. I really hate getting my blood drawn. I have such small veins that even the most experienced nurses have trouble. It usually ends up being traumatic for me.
The other good news that I had is that my parathyroid seems to be functioning okay which means I don’t really need to take the Calcium. Dr. Sunderland recommends that I take them anyway because I’m a woman and women need Calcium. These tablets are gargantuan, though. I was quite relieved on Saturday when we thought I was taking too much and we dropped it down to twice a day. After my visit with Dr. Sunderland, Brian and I agreed I could probably get by with just one Calcium tablet a day. Also, I graduated from Cytomel to Synthroid following this last visit so now, instead of taking medication multiple times a day, I just take my Synthroid once at 4 am and then my Calcium tablet at 8 pm. You guys probably think I’m weird because I keep such a strict medication schedule but Brian has been doing some research, and actually the doctor has said the same thing, the medicines work better when you take them at the same time each day.
Here’s to hoping that there are no ER trips or needles in store for me this weekend. Hopefully there won’t be any more surgeries for either. Blech.
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The Strong, Silent type…Not!
Posted on December 15, 2012 by Brian under Health, Relationship.
I have always been the emotional one in our relationship. I share my feelings and don’t hide when I am upset, angry or hurt. However, when my wife had to get a Thyroidectomy, I decided that I needed to be the strong one this time. Suppress all of those emotions that I normally wear on my sleeve so that she could feel that everything was going to be OK.
What I didn’t realize was that the suppression of my emotions was going to be much harder than I anticipated. On Thursday the day of her surgery I was doing really well. I was worried but I was keeping it together pretty well. I have always been a worrier but it’s just something I have become accustomed to. With all that worry comes a great deal of impatience. I try really hard to keep that in check as well. It’s something that I have learned to be aware of and work to keep at bay. Occasionally it gets away from me but it takes a lot now. Friday evening was when my emotions boiled to the surface and reached a point that I could not hold them back.
I tell my wife everything. We started this relationship with a “No Secretes” rule and we have kept that. I fessed up and told her that I was having a hard time controlling my worry. I explained that it was hard for me to see her out of character, down for the count, not running around wanting to do so much. I always tell her that she needs to learn to relax, needs to slow down. Now that she has, I freaked out and started to worry…even miss it. She reminded me that she just had surgery, she needs to take it easy, but she was not going to let this beat her and keep her down. She wasn’t going to let this stop her from doing what she has become accustomed to doing. I explained to her that I had been researching things that I needed to look out for, things that would let me know that she was not in prime condition. The problem with this is that for every one informative post, I had to weed through twenty post of people talking about how worse off they were. The first few didn’t really worry me, but more and more posts started to wear on me to the point that I could not hold anything back. My emotions surfaced. My worry for our future started to spiral out of control and for the first time in a vary long time, I felt very helpless.
I told her all of this, crying and trying to control it all. Needless to say, even after her pep talk I still didn’t sleep that well. I even told her this morning that I may need to go back to our therapist just to try and get back on track. On the plus side, the therapist had the same procedure done several years ago. She has given me a few pointers as well as my boss and a few other friends and co-workers that I learned recently have all gone through this procedure. I actually learned over the last couple of months that this is one of the most common procedures that is done.
This still doesn’t stop me from worrying. I have learned so much over the last few months in my research. I have learned what to watch for, loss of hair, loss of concentration and memory, violent mood swings, fatigue, extreme depression, the list goes on and on. I have faith in the doctors but that still does not stop me from worrying. Honestly, I have a feeling that I will continue to worry for quite sometime.
I love my wife more than anything in the world. I just hate seeing her like this and I feel so helpless. At this point in time I wish I had the ability to heal her, give her her natural thyroid back so that she didn’t have to take any medication. I know I can’t, so my only option is to be patient, be there for her, support her as much as I can and pray for the best.
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