Hey ya’ll. I’m waiting on my RAI and with needing a medium-high dose, I wonder if you have any recommendations for what helps stimulate the salivary glands to hopefully avoid issues? I’ve seen people recommend loads of water & sour patch kids, but do you have any other ideas? I’d like to be as prepared as possible! Thanks in advance!
Might be a dumb question but when you go to do bloodwork in the morning, do you take your thyroid medication in the morning as you regularly do or do you wait until after doing the blood work to take the medication?
My partner had a thyroidectomy one week ago (9/28), along with over 70 lymph nodes removed. His parathyroids were not removed. In regard to the surgery recovery, he’s doing fabulous. However, he is still in the hospital 7 days later for hypocalcemia - with no anticipated discharge date. He’s on Tums and calcitriol, plus an IV drip of calcium. He’s also been given magnesium. His oral medications have been unchanged; the dr noted he’s on max doses for oral.
Early on in his stay they were stopping the drip and his ionized calcium tanked. The endo then recommended tapering the drip…basically blood draws every 3-6 hours, and as long as his ionized calcium was within range they could decrease the drip. Tapering has been going well, and last night they made the decision to stop the drip and see what happened. Again, it tanked.
We are both feeling really frustrated. Has anyone else had a similar experience? Every day we are hoping he can finally be discharged but we find out every day it’s not happening.
I had my TT back in Dec 2023 and I have no issues with my actual scar from them removing my thyroid BUT I hate the scar from my drain I had. Initially I wasn’t even supposed to have one but last minute before surgery, the surgeon told me there’s a chance of having one. I now have a raised sensitive scar because of it.
Not only do I hate the way it looks and feel insecure about it (way more than the 11cm scar on my neck) but it is sometimes painful. Never in a “I need to take an ibuprofen” way but very itchy and if I do accidentally itch right over it, it hurts. If I wear certain fabrics and they rub it can become super painful after a while.
Does anyone have any tips on things I could do to maybe “reduce” the appearance or even just the sensitivity of it?
It’s even more annoying that I only have this type of scarring on the drain port and not my actual surgery scar. Like why’d I heal properly in one spot but not the other 😅
Hi everyone, I’m a 28F who posted recently about being very anxious about my upcoming thyroid cancer surgery. Unfortunately, since then, additional lymph nodes on my left side came back positive for PTC, so my surgery has now expanded to a total thyroidectomy + central neck dissection + bilateral lateral neck dissections (previously total thyroidectomy + central neck dissection + right lateral neck dissection).
I just found out this past week, and my surgery is scheduled for next week. My surgeon also told me that because of how extensive the surgery is, she can't guarantee everything will be completed in one operation. She'll start on the side with more disease and may need to stage the surgery depending on how things go.
I'm honestly really scared and having a hard time coping with such a big change so close to my surgery date. This would also significantly impact my recovery time and ability to work around my medical residency schedule should multiple surgeries be required/if there are any complications.
For anyone who had bilateral lateral neck dissections, I'd really appreciate hearing about your experience. Was everything completed in one surgery? What was recovery like? Did you have lasting numbness, shoulder/neck problems, lymphedema, voice/calcium issues, etc.? And most importantly, how are you doing now months or years later?
I'd especially love to hear from people who recovered well too, since it's been hard to find many experiences online from people who've had surgery this extensive.
Thank you ❤️
I had half my thyroid removed in February last year pathology came back as follicular carcinoma so in April we removed my other side. I did I131 in June and my doctor every appointment since has made it sound like everything was normal. My tumor marker test as he calls it has gone up and down every appointment until this last one it went up again. He then labeled me as biochemical incomplete response and told me I do still have cancer somewhere but too small to be picked up on scans. He wants to keep my thyroid suppressed but everytime I bring up being so damn tired and for the first time in my life I'm taking naps or how I'm always cold like my bones are frozen even when its hot outside. He says its not related.
I feel like I'm going insane and there is no actual plan or an end date for this. I feel like actual shit about complaining to family or friends because my mom also has stage 4 lung cancer and is actively going through chemo treatments. I just don't know how to handle this or how to approach my doctor about any of it. He blames the cold on me losing weight and the tiredness on sleep apnea when I've told him I've had sleep studies and I don't have sleep apnea. I'm 5'7 and 192 pounds so I feel like he shouldn't be blaming everything on my weight. My next appointment with him isn't till February and doing nothing for that long is going to drive me up the wall.
I don't know if this post is for advice or just to bitch. I guess it is what it is.
I had two surgeries and RAI for my thyroid cancer (last surgery and RAI was around a year ago) I've had little to no symptoms since my RAI besides some salivary gland issues that has mostly resolved. very suddenly in the past week I started feeling very down at work, intense head pain and brain fog + temperature issues and numbness all over my body. its only gotten worse to the point of me going to the hospital twice! my levels have been consistently fine, even mildly suppressed. when I went to the hospital the 2nd time they decided to check my tsh and it has shot up to 23.75!! I am just so shocked because I have been completely fine and consistent with my medication and I'm just suddenly having this terrible decline. its been so bad that today I thought I was going to pass out at work multiple times and had to ask to go home. I'm seriously considering going to the hospital again because I keep wondering if I am dying because of how truly terrible I feel. I am also only 21, barely, this really sucks. can anyone relate to this?
Newly diagnosed with PTC. The surgeon is going to take the entire thyroid, I’ve been having swallowing issues and throat spasms for quite a bit, has anyone had those symptoms clear up after the thyroid is removed?
It is quite rare, so I am not expecting anyone to have much experience with this. However, if anyone has, I would really appreciate hearing about your experience and disease progression as I navigate this.
When you are diagnosed with dermatomyositis, they do quite a bit of cancer screenings but I found the nodule first. I wonder if they will assume that is the cancer causing the paraneoplastic syndrome or if they will still screen for others.
At this point, it wouldn't even surprise me to find something else wrong.