I can’t write much today. Have this tenosynovitis thing, and to be frank, it’s in a murderous rage. Not cool at all. Speaking of cool, I need to be icing my wrist asap. So, let’s start.
I’m in a bit of a funk lately, because my body is kind of, well, breaking I guess.
As usual, it’s not a sudden thing, even though I didn’t know about it until this year.
But my dear, you might be thinking, It’s almost the end of this year now! Whatever do you mean?
Well, lemme tell ya.
I found out this week that the calcium level in my body is far too high. I also found out it has been too high for at least the last 9 years. This means at least one of my parathyroid glands has kicked itself into overdrive.
What does hyperparathyroid mean to a person?
Well, the parathyroid are the glands that control the release of calcium into your body.
Where do they get this calcium?
Your bones. So, yeah. Hyperparathyroidism is when the parathyroid glands kick into high gear and leach the calcium from your bones into your system. This has the potential to be a fast track to breaking bones doing normal things, such as walking. Or sitting in a chair the wrong way. Or, I don’t know, having a particularly energetic dream maybe. Bones like hips, and ribs.
No fun.
This does not actually change my mind that I have now, in some sort of reality, become 90+ years old while still under 50. Granted, not much under, but still, not there yet. Luckily for me, a bone scan has revealed that my bones are still doing great for my age.
Unluckily, however, this means another surgery. I have to have at least one parathyroid gland removed. The parathyroid are, as one may suspect, located cuddled up to the thyroid gland, which, as many may remember, is in the throat, kind of around the vocal cord area. The surgery goes into that area and removes the much smaller parathyroid, or parathyroids.
The surgery carries risk, of course, as all surgeries do. The risk is weighed against the potential good it will do the patient. The risk, for this surgery, is that it can cause vocal problems.
I have no idea if I’ve mentioned this, but I’m a musician. A ways back, I was a percussionist. I loved it, but had to give it up as I can’t afford my instruments (mallet percussion instruments often cost as much as a car). My saving grace in that has always been that I’m a singer, too.
We’re not talking professionally here, but I’m much better than ok. I also love singing. It makes me happy. I’ve been over the moon that I’ve gotten back into the chorale I was in before the stroke. We perform right before Christmas. I don’t want to lose that, the one activity for me from my old life that I can still do.
So the thought of this surgery has me rather distraught.
I still want to be able to sing afterward. I don’t want to catastrophize this, of course, but what if I can’t? What the hell do I do then?
I don’t have any solution to this yet. I just found out about the surgery needing to happen yesterday, so I haven’t found anything to bring me back to a better place in my mind.
Pair that with the fact that my counsellor just retired, and this isn’t really the best week.
So, there it is. That’s what’s on my mind, and what I’ll be dealing with over the next month or two.
Wish me luck on the upcoming concert. It’s going to be a very beautiful one.
