Oh, I wasn't using that stupid gland anyway

I was a little ambitious when I packed for the hospital, I admit. I brought two books, my journal, headphones, a change of clothes and slippers. The closest thing I got to any semblance of normalcy was struggling into my sweatpants on Saturday. I forced myself to brush my teeth so I would feel a little more human - as well as for the benefit of the medical professionals that needed to be in close proximity to my face - but that was really all I could manage.

As it turned out, I didn't actually go into surgery until about 3PM on Friday, about an hour behind schedule. I was starving and sort of cranky but relatively calm, even when they straight up walked me into the OR. That part was a little strange - there were 3 nurses, fully scrubbed in, and the anesthesiologist. The radio was playing. Everyone seemed to be very relaxed and friendly, which made me feel better and less likely to have my usual panic attack. I guess the only sign of my restrained anxiety was that I just kept babbling like an idiot. Dr. V was marking me while I was getting an IV, and that's the last thing I remember - no counting backwards from 10 and being told to imagine a happy place with palm trees.

I did not say anything cute when I woke up. I'm not sure I said anything intelligible. They asked if I was in pain. I kept saying that I was, mostly because I felt so delirious and my feet hurt for some reason. The morphine that was subsequently pumped into my IV made me sick. I threw up in a little plastic bin as soon as I was wheeled into my room, which in retrospect was probably the best thing for me. I felt a good deal better after that.

Friday night was hard. I didn't get up to the room until almost 9PM. I felt queasy and had the worst sore throat in recent memory. From the breathing tube I'd had during the 4-hour surgery, they told me, as opposed to the 4-inch incision in my neck and the discharge tube that was currently sticking out of it. If you say so, folks. It was probably the longest night of my life - I couldn't really get comfortable enough to sleep. And everytime I got myself into an OK position, the light would snap on, and a nurse or attendant or one of Dr. V's residents needed to mess with me. That went on until after midnight. Add to that the fact that I was sleeping on some kind of possessed air mattress that kept self-adjusting. I also hadn't had any solid food in almost 36 hours, and the endless supply of drugs, making my stomach very unhappy.

On the plus side, however, I could talk fairly normally (which was a relief), although it did start to hurt after a while. Dr. V told Mom that he had gotten everything with no complications, but he found some lymph nodes that looked suspect and removed them. I will get the pathology results on Thursday when I go for my follow-up appointment. I will need to do a dye test and then a scan to determine if any of the cancer cell are anywhere else in my body - if not, I won't need to do the radioactive iodine treament, which is a relief. Once all that is determined, I can start on the hormone replacement - that's really the light at the end of the tunnel. I won't feel anything close to normal until I start taking the hormones.

By the time I was discharged on Sunday morning, I felt better than I expected. I was able to eat pretty much whatever I wanted, and I could keep the sore throat at bay with Tylenol. As soon as they let me eat solid food on Saturday (after my breakfast of chicken broth and hot chocolate, I was allowed a regular lunch and promptly sent Mom to get me a hot dog), I felt immensely better. Even the removal of the drain from my neck wasn't bad as I expected.

"You should have seen the look on your face," my mother laughed at me. "You were like Really? It's over? That's it?"

I had indeed excepted the removal of 5 inches of plastic tube from my incision to be at least twinge a little. Not so. I didn't feel a thing.

At the moment, I guess I feel pretty good physically. In some ways, I feel both better and worse than I anticipated. The pain has really been minimal - other than the persistent but diminishing sore throat, I have almost no pain at all. The incision is sore but more of a nuisance than anything else. I can shower adn dress myself and am generally pretty mobile. The down side is that I am utterly exhausted. Even doing little things takes all the energy I have. Mom and I went to the grocery store, and I needed a two-hour nap when we got back. I will go a few hours where I feel pretty normal, and then it's as though someone opened a valve, leaking all the strength out of me.

The other strange thing has been the fact that Dr. V needed to reimplant the parathyroid glands - 3 out of 4 of them made ir out alive - and they are currently, to quote the dorky-cute resident who came in on Saturday, "stunned." It will probably take a few months for them to start working again. Until then I am on massive doses of calcium and vitamin D. If my calcium level gets too low, I get this weird tingling in my hands and face. If it gets really low, I have a seizure and die. So that's a little scary.

That's the physical recap. Emotionally I feel kind of blah. I hate being so drained and constantly needing to sleep. And I do mean constantly. More than that, I hate being removed from my regular life. It's unfair that everyone else can go about their business, and I can't right now. I can barely bring myself to shower and pull on sweats. I don't like missing work or just feeling like I'm trapped in the apartment, waiting to get better.

Everyone has been calling or emailing to check in, and that's been nice. Tracy and G came to visit in the hospital on Saturday with their respective partners. Tom called this morning on his way to work - talking to him made me feel better, which I hadn't when I woke up. So far everyone has been surprised that I can talk and that I sound pretty normal. I wish I felt more normal.

I'm mostly just impatient with the process. I want my life back.

Just a flesh wound

I actually look worse than I feel. No, really.

I plan on telling people that I was attacked by pirates.

My thoughts exactly

This showed up at the hospital on Saturday morning. You have to wonder if the people at 1-800-Flowers thought it was a joke.

None for me, thanks

On Friday night, I consumed the last alcohol that I can have for a good long while. After a healthy combination of tequila at dinner followed by vodka at Arlene's Grocery, I have no doubt that I was annoying and vaguely incoherent. I kept giving people shots of whiskey, probably in the hopes that they would join me down in the depths of intoxication. After all, this was my own personal mardi gras - one final hurrah before the cold, harsh restrictions of the medical community take hold. I cannot have any alcohol in my system for 14 days prior to surgery.

The cruel irony in this, of course, is that I leave for SXSW on Wednesday morning.

In a way, I'm actually glad that I will be making my first pilgrimage to Austin under strict orders to remain sober. My willpower is generally no match for an open bar, of which there will be many, but I don't really have much of a choice. Drinking = no surgery, and I would like to be relieved of The Cancer post-haste, thanks very much.

The Good
- I will be getting very little sleep as it is, and it's probably better than I actually do sleep, instead of passing out into liquor-induced unconsciousness

- Only minor risk that I will say something completely offensive to the wrong person, as opposed to absolute certainty when Johnnie Walker comes to hang out

-More room for BBQ and tacos

On the other hand, I'm also being realistic.

The Bad
-Drunk people (i.e. everyone else in downtown Austin) are insanely irritating if you're sober.

-Finding a way to explain why I'm good with Diet Coke, really, thanks - without getting into the real reason why I'm not throwing back scotch because it's free and in vast abundance.

-Booze makes bad bands better. In terms of both playing and watching.

So it will be interesting.

I have something to tell you

I have cancer.

Initially, when the reality was yet to fully settle in, the most effective way of managing the news seemed to be to treat in the most off-handed way as possible. Oh, hi, by the way - cancer, I has it. Crazy, right? I know!

Even still, the actual words - "I have cancer" - are weirdly heady to say out loud, and I've done it almost every day for the last two weeks. They don't flow delicately. They land with a sickening thud at the feet of whomever I'm telling. It's not my intention to impart the information so brutally, but I realized rather quickly that there is no nice way of saying it, only roundabout detours.

My endocrinologist tried to use Big Words. "Your biopsy showed stage II papillary carcinoma cells," he said evenly, shuffling papers in my file.

"So it's thyroid cancer," I said.

He cleared his throat. "It's low-grade cancer. It's not cancer." On the last word, he made exaggerated finger quotes.

This was not a lot of consolation for my mother, whom I called after leaving the office with my diagnosis of "low-grade cancer."

"Maybe it's like low-fat milk," I offered, trying to make her laugh. "Not as bad for you."

I had gone to my endocrinologist with every expectation of finding out that my hormone levels had crapped out and that I was finally due to start thyroid medication. Instead I left with an appointment with the ear, nose and throat surgeon at New York-Presbyterian and the unavoidable duty of telling people.

That first day, I told a lot of people. Not because I wanted sympathy but as a way to somehow make it real. After all, I felt fine. Maybe if I said it out loud enough times, the gravity of the situation would sink in. Every time I said the words - "I have cancer" - I pulled back a little to shield myself from the shrapnel from the impact. Trust me, it's not an easy thing to say. But they still seemed like just words.

So no matter how many people I told, it wasn't really real until I went to go see the surgeon. Until there was a camera up my nose, and I was staring at my own vocal chords. Until the details of the procedure and its aftermath were laid bare, in the form of a black ink drawing that the doctor sketched on a sheet of white paper in his lap. On the diagram, he drew long, looped lines to show where the nerves that control my vocal chords were in relation to my thyroid. In rare cases, damage to these nerves could result in a total loss of the ability to speak - or worse, in death, if the vocal chords were paralyzed in such a way that they lock and prevent breathing. All sold, the removal of my thyroid could take upwards of 6 hours because of the delicate dissection of these nerves.

There were other worst case scenarios of surgery - the inability to absorb calcium and vitamin D, bleeding, infection - but for some reason, the potential-but-unlikely damage to my vocal chords is the thing that stuck with me all day. Not because I have a lack of confidence in the surgeon. He seemed very nice and more than competent. He answered all the questions that I had and didn't make me feel foolish for being uneasy. He was also honest about the very real possibility that the cancer might have spread - there is no way to know until after my thyroid and lymph nodes have been removed and biopsied again.

I'm actually a little afraid at this point - which I'm not really willing to tell anyone, lest they think I'm making a lame bid for pity. This is very serious business, as much as I've been trying to pretend that it isn't. I just hope it's not the time that I need to pay for all the bad things I've done in my life. I'm fine with having a scar - what's one more? - and taking pills for the rest of my life. I just hope that's the worst of it.

When it's all over, I want to be able to say that I don't have cancer.