After surgery

Hi Amy  Sorry to hear you have had a rough time with your first surgery and I understand your concern regarding your next surgery.. You have a right to be told your full results and sadly professionals want to summarise the diagnosis. You should push to learn all the information you need. After my completion surgery I found it strange coming to terms with taking two or three wee white pills which were vital in ensuring that my body would continue to function well without my thyroid. I took comfort from the fact that thousands of people in the uk are on the same medication each day. It can take a little while to get to a settled dosage but I was reassured that I would be supported till I was on the right dose.

I was concerned about RAI but this treatment has been used for about 50 years and now we benefit from all the learning about what dose to be administered. The isolation was a wee bit boring but apart from that RAI was trouble free. Do follow the advice on drinking plenty and showering often to flush the drugs through your system and the Nuclear team will guide you on what steps to take.

I wish you all the best for the next stage of your recovery

What is life like without a thyroid? Pretty much like life WITH a thyroid once you've got your thyroxine dose optimised.  It's pretty amazing that an essential organ can be replaced with a couple of little pills. It takes a while to get the dose optimised but once you're there, it's not the biggest of deals.
Please don't worry about staging. It really isn't as important with TC as with many other types. Your treatment will be pretty much the same regardless of the staging and oncologists don't seem to set much store by it. 3.5 weeks post surgery, most people honestly don't know much about their situation and the surgeon needs to get the other half and the rest of the lymph nodes out before they can know staging - in fact, based on the TNM staging system (pop it in the search bar on the main site - there's good info on Macmillan about how that works)  some aspects of staging cannot even be confirmed until after RAI. So please, don't get too worked up about it.