Hey, can I share my experience and see if anyone has had anything vaguely similar? I had a total thyroidectomy with neck dissection as I have stage 4 melanoma and it had spread to my neck lymph nodes at the same time I needed my thyroid removing and on a pet scan they weren’t sure if the cancer had spread to my thyroid as well on the 20th of October.
Drain failed, had to have emergency surgery early hours of the 22nd where because I’d eaten tea I had to be put to sleep in an urgent way? So I was awake when they used the paralytic and then I haemorrhaged to the point that I had 22bags of blood products , was kept in for a week in total as it was a real shit show. Was home for 6 days and then woke up on Halloween so so sick, my neck felt so tight and I had a really hoarse voice. I couldn’t drive because of the operation so I got a bus and a tram back to the hospital that did the surgery.
Waited 10 mins to check in at reception in A&E, walked into triage and left all my stuff in the waiting room and the nurse was like ooh wow, yeah no you need to come with me immediately, went over to majors and saw my neck for the first time that day and it was absolutely gigantic. Dr comes and has a look and put me into resus. I had to get a poor nurse to go and get my stuff from the waiting room!
I was admitted to the same ward I had been discharged from the week before in the bed opposite 🤣. Had a ct scan and lots of antibiotics. On ward rounds the surgeon comes over and says ‘yes we’ll get that drained now’ and I was like ooh yay thank you. Stupid me! He stuck a needle in my neck without any anaesthetic and withdrew 50ml of pus from it. It hurt so much.
I had an ultrasound and it showed I still had 100ml of fluid and that actually the pocket had got bigger between the ct scan on Friday and the ultrasound on Saturday. They then decided I needed a 3rd surgery to put a drain in (again)! And left me nil by mouth for 3 days whilst they dealt with more urgent urgent operations and I completely understood but god I was a grumpy cow!! It didn’t help that I work in the hospital and was trying to keep it quiet and then one of the surgeons ratted me out
I was discharged on the 8th of November, and I quite honestly feel traumatised by the whole thing. I found out on Friday that 5 of the 40 lymphnodes had cancer but the immunotherapy I had before the surgery had killed the cancer and the area of my thyroid that they thought was cancer was just inflammation from the immunotherapy induced hyperactive thyroid, so I’ve got another 12 months of cancer treatments to make sure it doesn’t come back.
Has anyone else had such an unbelievably shocking experience ?