Recovery Time

Greetings, from the comfort of my king-size bed. I'll give you the run down of the events the past couple days.....

We arrived at the hospital at 7am on Wednesday to get checked in for my thyroidectomy.  After getting changed into my beautiful hospital gown, I was shown to my bed. Then my friendly nurse gave me an IV and did an EKG (for my heart murmur). Then, as we waited, there was a slight panic because they forgot to give me a pregnancy test. Seriously?! Wouldn't that have been the surprise of the century, to find out that we were preggers. Luckily, Dr. Sudela's tubal ligation is still holding strong and I am without child. :) Finally, the surgeon and anesthesiologist visited with me for a bit. After I said my goodbye to Jordan and got a quick kiss, I was wheeled down the hallway. And that's the last thing I remembered, because I was asleep before we even made it to the OR.

They said the surgery was supposed to take two hours, but it took three instead. I can only imagine Jordan's nerves, as he waited for the surgeon to come to him with news. I vaguely remember voices throughout the day as I woke for a few minutes at a time in recovery. I just remember being in a lot of pain, not being able to speak, and some creepy guy (aka Jordan) constantly staring at me from my bedside. I slept most of the day and used a notepad to convey most messages. They treated me with some awesome morphine for most of the day, but switched to Vicodin later in the evening.  But since I hadn't eaten anything, it made me pretty nauseous. Thankfully, after feeling like I was going to puke for awhile and getting some Zofran to battle the nausea, I was all good again.  We stayed overnight, and Jordan even got his own hospital bed to sleep in. Later the next afternoon, another surgeon finally came in to check on me. It was then time to remove the nasty drain from my neck. I thought Jordan was going to pass out while he watched them do it. Don't get me wrong; it felt weird having it pulled out of me, but I'm sure watching was even worse. Then we were sent on our way, with a prescription for some Vicodin and a follow-up appt. on the 26th.

Jordan then got me home and settled. I swear, he's been the best little nurse ever. Between fixing me food, getting my meds, taking care of the boys, and helping me wash all the dried blood out of my hair, he's been awesome. It's just hard to get comfortable. There's definitely more pain than I was expecting. It feels like I have the worse case of strep throat, whiplash from being in a wreck and unable to move my neck, and my voice is still very hoarse (nerves are bruised and may take a while for my voice to recover). I haven't had a good look at my incision yet; there are steri-strips covering it until my appt.on the 26th. But it's a two-inch incision dead center on my throat. There's going to be no hiding that thing. :(  I spent most of today laying around in the bed, taking little naps. But I did get a special delivery of some chocolate covered strawberries and the cutest Get Well cake pops today!

Recovery is slow, but I'm making it. The kids don't quite understand that Mommy can't pick them up and they need to be gentle with me. Big thanks for Uncle LoLo for keeping the boys while we were at the hospital! He's definitely a pro at handling those two little rascals by now. :)

The surgeon said the pathology results should be back by Monday, so hopefully I'll know about those then. Definitely saying prayers that we get good news on that front. But it looks like I have another week or so of lying around, trying not to get bored.  Thank you everyone for your thoughts and prayers!

HAPPY 4TH BIRTHDAY TO AUSTIN!!

Is it really true, that we have a FOUR year old?!?! Sometimes it seems like it was just the other day that we brought this chunky monkey home from the hospital.  (Look at how big that noggin is!! Certainly glad I had a c-section!)

But here we are four years later, and this kid seriously acts like he's 10 years old or something. But then when he wants me to hold him and give him kisses, I know he'll always be my baby; a momma's boy for sure. :)  This past year he has changed so much. He's independent, hard-headed, stubborn, funny, and sweet, all at the same time. And he has for sure turned into one of the best big brothers ever.

Today, we treated Austin to a full day of fun for his birthday (well, minus the shots he got at the Dr. this morning!). We started out with pancakes at McDonald's, which is his absolute favorite.  He weighed in at the doc's office at 34.9lbs. (75%) and was 39" tall (25%); no surprise here. :)  After getting poked at the pediatrician's office a few times, we headed over to Shennaniganz for some bowling and games.  Then we ventured over to the movies.  He chose to see Hotel Transylvania, and it was pretty cute. Of course he insisted on popcorn, an Icee, and gummy bears. :)  Then we all gathered with the fam for a Mexican dinner and then to Chuck E. Cheese for more games. Geez! What an exhausting, but fun day!

I love this kid to pieces and can't remember life without him in it. Although I don't have favorites, I still think that he and I share a special bond. We waited what seemed like forever before getting pregnant with him, and he was the first to make me a mother.

Driving race cars with Daddy!

Waiting at the Dr.'s office for shots! :(

Our super-bowler!

We had his birthday party this past weekend and it was a blast. I'll blog about that in a few days. But I've got a big day tomorrow, with my surgery, so I need to get some sleep!

Handsome Boys!

We got the boys' school pictures back today. Too much money later...............I walked away with pics of my lil' Houghams!

Party Time!

We're less than a week away from Austin's 4th birthday.  Geez, how the heck did that happen?!  Anyways, we decided to make things easier this year and have the party somewhere besides the house. We're having it at a place that has a giant bounce house room and they'll get game cards for the arcade, too. They even provide pizza, drinks, plates, cups, etc. Basically all I have to do is show up with some cupcakes and balloons. I know what you're thinking; it was HARD for me to give up this much control when it came to my kid's birthday party. Of course! But in the end, it was for the best for me to just swipe my credit card and make it all happen. Since going back to full-time at work last month, things have been busier; and with my surgery next week, I don't think I would have been able to focus and have time to get everything ready for a typical Hougham birthday party.

Surgery Time....

Remember earlier in the year, when I talked about my big ol' thyroid and the biopsy I had? Well, everything came back fine on that, but it has continuously given me problems. It was even the cause of my heart problems I had back then too. But that stinkin' thyroid has continued to stay 3 times its normal size, and the cyst is still there. The combination of the two of them are putting pressure on my throat, making it difficult to swallow at times. And I still have had a few episodes where my heart feels like it's about to beat out of my chest.

Over my past couple of visits with my endocrinologist, we've discussed having surgery to just take them both out.  This would hopefully accomplish a few things:

• Relieve the pressure on my throat. Sometimes it's worse than others, but I can definitely feel it.
• Hopefully regulate my thyroid hormone levels easier, without the 'episodes' where my body gets out of wack.  Maybe even be able to decrease my meds a little (since it wouldn't have to counteract the antibodies constantly attacking my thyroid anymore). The increased meds have even made me a little more anxious and restless, often making it difficult to sleep at night.
• Be able to remove the complex cyst and send the whole thing out for biopsy. While they were able to biopsy the liquid part before, there is still a portion that is a solid mass. My doc tells me that it's not uncommon for there to be some malignant cells in it. Needless to say, this part has me the most freaked out about 'what if', which would result in some radiation treatment if the results came back with that conclusion.

Anyways, long story short, after debating long and hard, I've decided to go ahead and have the surgery done. I met with the surgeon last week, and he performs about 150 of these a year, so I feel pretty confident that he knows what he's doing. While I'm not excited about having to be put under general anesthesia for a two hour surgery, having a breathing tube put down my throat, and having my neck cut open, we feel like it's the best decision. And then there's the fear of how I have reacted to anesthesia in the past with my c-sections.  Visions of non-stop vomiting for hours do not sound like a good idea after this kind of surgery, so that could definitely complicate things a little.  Yeah, I'm scared as hell about all of this. And the results that could come back. But I'd rather get it all out and know a final answer so that I can get any further treatment needed and just move on.  

The surgery is set for the morning of the 14th, and I'll most likely just stay one night in the hospital before I'm sent home into the capable hands of my hubby to take care of me.  My post-op appointment isn't until the 27th, so I'll be out of work for nearly two weeks. Luckily, Jordan was able to secure a little over a week off to be with me too, since I'm supposed to take it easy and not lift no more than 10 lbs. (so that means no munchkins!). My boss has been very understanding, and I have a great team at work who's going to pick up the slack while I'm gone.  

So, that's my update.  Say a little prayer for me if you get a chance. :)

Happy Fall, Y'all!

Heyyyyyyy! Happy Fall Y’all! I see it’s been a while since I last did a blog, so here we go. I know I should probably do a blog a day talking about what I'm thankful for each day this month, but it's going to be a crazy month (more to come on that), so I don't think I could really keep up.

First of all, I can’t believe it’s November already; the holidays will be here before I know it! Anyways, we took our annual trip to the pumpkin patch with the boys to pick out a few prize pumpkins.  As usual, Mommy’s photo session didn't go nearly as I had envisioned. Oh well.  With the two pumpkins we picked out, the boys, made Buzz and Woody pumpkins, easy enough. 

But that wasn't good enough for MeowMeow and LoLo, who brought two pumpkins over this past weekend for us to get our hands dirty in and actually do some carving. It was actually a lot of fun, the weather was beautiful outside for us to do it, and they turned out pretty good.

For Halloween, we let Austin decide what he wanted to be.....Buzz Lightyear (surprise, surprise!). Then we worked everybody else's costumes around his, with a Toy Story theme. Chase was a cute little cowboy as Woody, and Jordan and I were Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head.  I know, I haven't dressed up for Halloween since I was in college. (And even then, it was just a scandalous version of a maid, witch, etc.!). Anyways, we spent some time at the boys' Fall Festival at their daycare as a practice around for dress-up. 

  

I was actually surprised at how well our trick-or-treating around the neighborhood went. Chase pretty much refused to ride in the wagon at all, and walked nearly the entire time. His poor little legs must have been exhausted trying to keep up with us. But he would walk right up to the front door with his bubba and get his candy. They were so sweet together! Needless to say, we made out with buckets of candy. :)