Day 340

Not a great day.


Woke up out of weirdly disturbing dreams to an email from my new endocrinologist. Remember how happy I was last week about how I wasn't going to need surgery?  Yeah, well...all the labs are back and now it looks like I DO need surgery:
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Your calcium as well as PTH level has slowly gone back up in the range consistent with diagnosis of primary hyperparathyroidism. In the absence of any other identifiable cause for low bone mass + with history of non-traumatic fibular fracture + Young age --> you are a candidate to be considered for parathyroid surgery by Dr. R If you agree, I will place an order for neck ultrasound and sestamibi scan to localize over-active parathyroid before sending you back to Dr. R.
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Talk about feeling sucker-punched. I didn't realize till I got that email just how much I didn't want surgery.  Yeah, sure, logically I know it's the right thing to do otherwise my bones will continue to get increasingly flimsy and I definitely don't want another stress fracture - one was more than enough - but emotionally I'm not so great with any of this. Not the neck surgery which I KNOW carries the risk of injuring a certain nerve which would mess with voice, smell and taste...and definitely not the whole general-anesthesia idea: I read Coma at the impressionable age of 11 and it's stuck with me all these years, see.


Also, if I'm being honest, I'm not at all happy with the idea of a scar on my neck, either...oddly enough, my neck is one of the things I'm kind of vain about. I have such a short neck I always wear open/V-neck tops otherwise I get way too much snowman effect.  I hope it's a good-looking scar because I'm not going to change what I wear this late in the game.


In any case I spent the whole morning pretty much in a fog/funk/depression and my very practical-minded not-terribly-sympathetic family didn't really help all that much. I wanted sympathy over sensibility...but I'm doing better now. The drive to and from my site visit helped me come to terms with things and the practical aspects of scheduling the imaging (radioactive stuff! I might glow in the dark! Okay, not really) and the various visits helped too.


Boy I hope my fancy toffee comes today...I could use some candy therapy

[A bit later]: The doctor wanted to do estradiol and FSH levels to see whether or not I was in menopause (I had endometrial ablation 6 years ago; can't recommend it highly enough) because it makes a difference how they interpret bone scans. Those results are just in and I am post-menopausal. Yippy-skippy.  Surgery and menopause all in the same day; ain't it just so special ?!!?

[much later]: The toffee -did- come, praise be. Ate one package of 5 little squares all by myself then shared a second with Youngest and ABL. That leaves two more for later.

Of course this day being what it is, ABL had to get pushy about dinner. Yeah well. Dinner was insanely easy: Stouffers mac&cheese and microwave-steamed broccoli. Went into close-down-the-mountain mode and crashed on the couch both before and after dinner which seems to be helping as did texting with Middle about the events of the day.

Had dying bananas so I made banana bread which is now in the oven. I'm back on the couch till it's done then it will be off to beddy-bye. Banana bread and bed are definitely better than booze. Even on a lousy day like today. Especially on a lousy day like today.