Comparing Minimally Invasive Video-Assisted Thyroidectomy and Conventional Thyroidectomy

You don’t have to lose your thyroid. With adequate armour thyroid supplementation, nutrients like magnesium, selenium, and iodine, the thyroid can be saved. Living without a thyroid is not easy as doctors will have you believe. You don’t just take a pill once a day and then you’re fine. If you’re going to a doctor who doses T4 meds only, who uses the pituitary test TSH instead of free T3 and free T4 to test your thyroid hormones, then you should do some research. Your future health is worth it. Do the research and save your thyroid.

I am about to have my thyroid removed as I have Graves Disease… why do you say it is not easy after surgery..please let me know what happens to you.

I had a complete Thyroidectomy in April of 1995 ~ I was sitting at the dinner table on Thanksgiving 1994 with my hand on my neck and felt this strange lump I was able to manipulate it from side to side and had asked my sister in law if she was able to do the same with her throat. Her comment to me was “No maybe it is because you have gained so much weight” With this comment I was completely embarrassed and had ignored my lump and though maybe it is just from me getting so fat. It was not until I was literally waking up at night gasping for my breath that I felt this was not just a weight gain issue. I would be awakened at night on several occasions feeling as though someone was literally wrapping their hands around my throat and choking me. When I went to the Doctors office the following April of 1995 he immediately sent me to the hospital where I had an ultrasound of my neck from there I was sent to have a radioactive uptake scan done. This showed that I had three cold nodules on my thyroid. I was then informed that I needed surgery and there was a ten percent possibility I had thyroid cancer. All this information was given to myself and my husband in my hospital room in the presence of my three young children by the surgeon whom was to complete the procedure. All my children heard out of the Surgeons mouth was Cancer and that was it they immediately thought their mother was going to die! I was frightened for my children and myself. I had no chance to get a second opinion and did not know where to even consider looking or to begin looking. I agreed to surgery immediately I was told by this surgeon that everything would be fine that he did this particular surgery on several patients and they were fine. I even ran into an employee of the hospital in the elevator while going to surgery whom had the similar procedure, she stated this particular surgeon had completed her surgery without any complications. After this encounter I felt more hopeful of my outcome. When I had awoken from the surgery I was immediately greeted by the Surgeon and his Nurse Practitioner, at this time I was informed that I had the complication of hypocalcaemia and it would only be temporary that it would go away in about three months. This is 2008 and I still suffer from hypocalcaemia ~ my symptoms are constant numbing and tingling of hands and feet to start which moves over my entire body where ever any pressure or weight is place in one spot for more than a minute or two when the symptoms start ~ this then further continues to cause gastrointestinal dumping if I consume any food during this time. I have facial twitching and my mouth begins to feel like it is pulling all my muscles located around my mouth to form a very tiny circle with my lips. I have had this progress to shortness of breath with chest pain also. When this occurs I have no notice and no control as to how rapidly the symptoms progress, sometimes it occurs just before I am to have my period or shortly after the the start of it. This has been a regular monthly episodic occurrence since the surgery was preformed. Almost one year to the exact day I had to have my gallbladder removed from calcium stones that formed due to the large amount of calcium supplements I have to consume on a daily basis. Nine days after having my gallbladder removed I was in the Surgeons office for a post operative follow up of this procedure and began having kidney stones form in my kidneys. If I am under any emotional stress my symptoms of tetany begin to develop in my hands and this is very painful and involuntary. I literally have to manually unbend my fingers with one hand to attempt to stop my fingers from curling in on them selves. All the while these symptoms are occurring I am consuming additional calcium and calcitriol to slow down the process and prevent it from going into shortness of breath and chest pain and prevent myself from passing out. I feel psychically exhausted when this happens and it usually subsides when I consume at least twelve 1200mg liquigel capsules of calcium on top of what I regularly take on a daily basis. I have been placed on hydrochlorodithiazide to force the calcium back into my blood stream and prevent it from being eliminated through urination. This works though it depletes my potassium and caused me to awaken with severe muscle cramping in the middle of the night and constant leg cramps, so now I take a Potassium pill daily. I searched out and found a wonderful Doctor after ending up with all these complications and years of struggling with them monthly. He is Doctor Leslie DeGrout at the University of Chicago Hospitals Center for Advanced Medicine. Doctor DeGrout is an Endocrinologist whom I wished I started with first, before surgery. He informed me that my complications were a direct result from the inability of properly dissecting the the thyroid gland from the parathyroid gland during surgery. He further stated had I gone to the University of Chicago Hospital I would have had far better skilled surgeons whom preform this exact procedure regularly with zero complications. My calcium levels when I was sent to see Doctor DeGrout were 4.6 I now am asymptomatic when I am maintained at 7.8 to the 8.25 range if I go higher than 8.25 I tend to begin to have kidney stone problems. In the winter months I have more bone pain especially in the hip joints, it is harder to move around during damp cold months. I am more flexible during the summer hot months, my body feels much better the more I am outside in the hot sun. I am seriously considering moving to a warmer climate in my more senior years. I am fifty years old now and want to be able to be more active and I notice my body loves the warmer weather I am able to move around more with less effort and pain during the hot months. I have stopped telling my Doctors of these symptoms as they all know what why and where this has originated from. I am telling you as you seriously need to research your Doctors skill level of the procedure before you undergo any procedure ~ find out what the possible complications are ~ what damages will you have to suffer with the remainder of your life ~ and consider the financial cost of future medical incurred expenses as a result. I was rushed to the hospital 19 times the first year after my thyroid was removed due to hypocalcaemia complications. It gets old and very frustrating really fast. My pathology report came back negative for Cancer though they requested to keep my tissue samples for study purposes, as they were classified as being severe destructive Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and supposedly the worst ever seen. I am not writing this to scare anyone from having any surgical procedure. I am writing it to stress the fact that you as the patient and person undergoing the procedure owe it to yourself and loved ones to investigate the procedure throughly before proceeding with anything. Get references of the surgeon from patients, find out how many times he or she has preformed this procedure each year and what ever you do do not go to your local community hospital and expect as skilled a surgeon to be able to preform as delicate of a surgical procedure. I also forgot to mention my voice was not there for months after the surgery I was told to not attempt to speak or there would be permanent damage to my vocal cords. My voice when it did come was octaves lower than normal. If I were to know what I do now about the medical field when I first was given this information of my condition ~ I would have researched and found the most skilled Surgeon and first started with the best Endocrinologist in the country which I later found ~ Doctor Leslie DeGrout after attempting hormonal therapy to shrink the growth of the tumor then and only then would I consider surgery or I would investigate killing the thyroid radioactively and the ramification of that. Having no thyroid totally and possibly no parathyroid totally I now know the metabolic importance and need of these organs and the vital role they play in the daily function of the human body. I live the daily result of the damage left to my body and I wish I could have those years back. This damage did not only effect myself but it effected my family as well as they have had to live with me and all my resulting health issues from this physically,mentally, emotionally and financially. I am not exaggerating on anything to make my story sound better or dramatize the situation. I am actually angry with myself for not investigating the situation more and realizing I owed myself that much more. I trusted in the medical Doctors because of how I was raised to believe that Doctors knew all. I now work in the medical field and have worked in the same hospital as the Surgeon whom did my surgery. I now know his skill and have seen his work in many cases. Would I have choosen him as my Surgeon now? Absolutely not! Working in the medical field you see an entirely different side of a Doctor. You are able to see their attitude toward the patient in front of the patient and his attitude behind the patient’s back no sooner he leaves the patient’s bedside. In the medical field I have meet some really great Doctors who really know and care about what they are doing. Then I also have meet those Doctors that have no business being in the field of caring for an animal let alone a human being. I used to respect all Doctors just because they had that title, now any Doctor I come in contact with has to earn that respect from me with their skill, knowledge and demonstration of professionalism and genuine care for the patient. In the work place I must give that professional respect only due to their title. Personally any Doctor who I see must earn that trust and respect of me through his or her manner in which they care for me as their patient ~ their follow through is very important from start to finish. It is your life they are giving care to ~ life they should care to as if it were their own!

I had my thyroid removed in January. I have never had any major complications, other than them not being able to regulate my thyroid levels. I had a very large goiter. Neither Armour or synthroid would shrink it, and it just continued to grow and grow until I could not eat without choking or breath. My voice became raspy and deepened and the bulge in my neck started to become noticable. My FNA (2 of them) were inconclusive and the ultrasound was useless because my goiter was too big for the scanned area with the ultrasound! My cat scan showed my trachea was moved over 2″ to the right. Only my radioactive uptake was “fine” – which is the only information my Dr. told me. I was however, told there was a very good possibility my thyroid was cancerous. The biopsy after surgery was negative though. I had a total thyroidectomy and 3 of the parathyroids removed. I still have some everlasting effects, but I manage beautifully now. The surgery was difficult, but manageable. It was not painful, only “uncomfortable”. It was the smartest move to make in regards to my thryoid. Listen to your body and what it says needs to be done. If you can’t eat, sleep or breath because of an enlarged thyroid and medication won’t shrink it, then what are your options? Only you can make this difficult decision. Me, personally, I would rather live with medication then continue to go on with all of the problems my thyroid was causing.