2nd neck disection Monday

[Guest guest]

Hi, I'm going in for a second surgery. Neck disection on Monday June 30th.

My doctor is doing it at the hospital as an out patient surgery and will have

me show up at his office July 1st for the drains to be taken out. I was

hoping he would go through the same incision from my TT surgery with neck

disection

and make no other new incisions. But he sees more on the PET scan that is

higher up the neck, so he will get the one lymph node on the cartotid artery,

(which is exactly in the same spot from my first surgery and has grown back in

just a year) then make another incision under the chin and salivary glands to

look for the other 2 lymph nodes that lit up on the PET. After my preop and

surgery discussions, I remembered how difficult it was to keep my head

comfortable after my first surgery. I once read someone slept in their car in

the garage

to keep their head elevated and back. I don't have a reclyner chair....so

yesterday we went to a local rental store and rented one with a massager for the

back built in. : ) I will sleep in it for the first week till stitches

come out. After my TT surgery in Feb 2002, my thyroglobulin levels grew 4 times

through the year while I was on Levoxyl .125 and had a tsh of.10 I had a

negative/clean I131 scan with thyrogen after one year post surgery. Then a PET

scan 2 mos later. The PET scan worked and revealed these new nodes. I'm so

worried that the lymph node on the carotid artery will be hard to remove all the

way and continue to come back. Has anyone had to have a lymph node removed

on their carotid or jugular that came back? Even after RAI treatment? I had 2

MRI's during the year also because of a salivary gland problem. They always

showed all my neck masses as being resolved and gone. But now after the PET, I

had another MRI and their are three lymph nodes in the areas that lit up on the

PET. I read the posts here all the time, and thank everyone for the

wonderful advice to each other. I've learned much more than I ever could from

my

doctors.

Thanks. Lee from San Diego, CA

41 yr old female

TT Feb 2002 radical lymph node disection

23 lymph nodes (14 pap thyca)

and a encapsulated tumor in a blood vessel

RAI 202mci May 2002

4 suppressed Tg levels taken through the year after May

Feb. 2003 Thyrogen with RAI 5 mci Clean scan

PET scan April 2003/ 3 areas with activity

NOW: tsh .10 Tg 8. (suppressed)

my doc never took my Tg while I was hypo

or even with the thyrogen shots...just scanned.

And has never given me a scan while hypo...

except for the first one after surgery. He just

went straight to thyrogen. What I've learned

from this site is different. Also he doesn't believe in

the LID. I did do it though very strict, after reading

about it on the internet from the THYCA site.

Anyone have a great endo who treats thyca in San Diego?