@colleenyoung
I had a large nodule on the right side of my thyroid that had an FNA that was suspicious for cancer. I also had a cyst on my parotid glad that reacted to the core needle biopsy and grew fast two months after the biopsy. Dr. Moore and his team was amazing. I am about 5 days out from surgery and am improving. I typically have a lot of anxiety when it comes to to medical procedures, but it didn’t ever hit me. Everyone at the Mayo was amazing and I couldn’t imagine going anywhere else for a procedure. I really felt listened to as well as all the professionals that I encountered reassured me that they knew what they were doing. I never felt like a burden and I felt like everyone was there to help me. Everyone there is a saint doing God’s work. Truly amazing. And Dr Caswell and her assistants, Jake and Jaclyn kept me calm and safe and gave me the right meds to help me not feel nauseous one bit. I think as my husband wheeled me to the car I said, I feel really good. 😊

My thyroid incision hurt quite a bit when I woke up, but they must have given me something through the iv pretty quickly to help it and I’ve just been taking Tylenol and ibuprofen since. I’m so thankful that I can still smile, but I do have a lot of eye weakness and everything around my ear is numb, so the parotid surgery feels more annoying than painful. Although my jaw did hurt when I was eating Mac and cheese and chewing maybe a little too much. I’m still sticking to applesauce, protein shakes l, mashed potatoes and scrambled eggs.

The anticipation of the surgery was definitely worse than getting through it and being on the recovery side. I’m grateful to have lots of rest and lots of help.

Oh and all the pathology came back benign, so that is reassuring that this is all one and done even with a small Nadine on the other half of the thyroid that is still there.