Tuesday's visit with the surgeon

The visit went well with Dr. Goldenberg, the surgeon who will be performing the thyroidectomy. Shelly went with me to ensure all the right questions were asked. One such question put the surgeon on the defense: "So, this is an easy surgery then?" to which he replied, "Yep, any old lay person could do it." It was a tense couple of minutes as we were trying to decide if it really offended him. It was a weird and different place for me since it is me who normally has the foot-in-mouth disease. Of course any old lay person would realize the real intent of the question was to find out how comfortable he was with the surgery. In the end, we left with these main two comforting thoughts:

1. Dr. Goldenberg does 3 or 4 of these per week and has been doing it for 20 years.
2. The pain and recovery will be a breeze compared to the tonsillectomy and UPPP surgery that I had in September, 2006.
   

The hospital will be Clarion North and the date is set for 2/26. The time of day is unknown until 2/24. Assuming everything goes as planned, I will be in for one night and two days. The recovery period is up to two weeks, or less if I feel fine after a week.

The complete cure rate is 90 to 95%. We failed to ask what happens to the other 5 to 10%. Does it mean there's a chance it has spread and therefore this is only a partial cure? I will be calling Dr. Meacham to get a better idea of this and a few other questions. He is the one who decided the bloodwork, ultrasound, and FNA tests were needed.