How long in hospital for neck dissection? Advice for mum with young children

Hello Mbow,

I did full thyroidectomy & neck dissection for papillary thyroid cancer last summer. I stayed in the hospital from Monday to Friday, but mostly because I had a serious calcium crisis on Wednesday - other than that my discharge was going from day to day. After the surgery you need to be careful not to lift weights for a period of time. The neck also feels stiff for a while and I personally felt also weak and slow the following weeks.

For the radioiodine I stayed in the hospital Monday to Wednesday - I had the option to leave on Tuesday night with caution but preferred to leave on Wednesday with ease.. I think the amount of days on how much you have to isolate after the hospital also depends on the level of the radio in your body and how quickly it is getting released based on your body and the amount of water you are drinking or can drink. Personally they let me know when they discharged me - it is a bit more strict for getting in contact with children and pregnant women, in my case it was 2 days for them, but as I said I think this depends on many factors and it’s more personal I think. 

I wish you all the very best and I am sending you healing thoughts!

Hi I have had what sounds very similar to you 5 weeks ago I was in hospital for 5 days after op, just going to see oncologist tomorrow regarding radiotherapy so will fins out more then, have found that after the op I have been extremely tired and having problems swallowing so only eating soft foods is getting better after 5 weeks but is slow progress.  Also I don't have young children vut do have a daughter who is pregnant so anxious about not veing able to see her or my other grandchildren, hopefully will know more tomorrow.

Hope this helps and might be able to let you know more after my appointment.

RegRdz xx

Thanks so much for your reply! I hope you are doing really well one year on? X

Sending lots of healing thoughts as you begin to recover from the surgery. I hope you’ll recover well and fingers crossed you won’t have to be away from your daughter or grandchildren for too long. Thank you for making contact x

Hi. 

I've had central and left neck dissection plus TT in April 22. 

I will be clear here: I was floored for 4 weeks after surgery. Even walking to the toilet was a task.

Anyway: 2 night in hospital, very uncomfortable, drain for one night but my calcium dropped so had to stay for an observation.

Pain was not the worst. I was taking paracetamol for a week and that's it. If you have small kids I really think you should not stay with them by yourself. It will be hard to walk, not to malentiin taking care of kids.

The other thing I need to mention is the shoulder. Something was damaged in it at the surgery and I was in pain for months. Also couldn't hold my arm up. It took months of physio to get back some movement and not be in pain. After physio and second surgery (one more lymph node removal) I am back with shoulder movement to about 75%. I accepted it will not go back to how it was before.

Any questions just ask and I will try to answer asap. 

Good luck and take care x

Thank you so much for your message - I’m sorry to hear you had such a hard recovery process as well as a second surgery. It’s really useful to me to be realistic and not expect to be able to come home straight away so I appreciate your honesty. They are taking so long to decide which surgery I need - they are definitely doing a central neck dissection but can’t decide if left neck dissection is necessary or not - the scans are unclear so they are going to try to biopsy again on the left and get some more information. The waiting is driving me a little crazy at this point! 
Sorry to hear you haven’t regained full movement back in your shoulder - I read that it can be a risk of the surgery. I hope it’ll at least improve a little more for you.

Takd good care x

Yes the waiting game stinks. But when the ball start to roll all will be done in no time. I had holiday booked for just before the surgery and it was the worst holiday in my and my family's life.

I will just mention the second surgery was easy and I was driving by myself 16 hours after it. So it's not all bad news (as maybe I sounded pessimistic - if I did I apologies)

Good luck lovely x

Hi Isabel 

hope ur fully recovered now. Just wanted to ask why u had a second surgery ? Why didn’t they remove lymph nodes same time as first surgery ?

thanks