Saturday, June 23, 2012

June 20, 2012 – Looking for Burglars in an Empty House

Today I drive to Memorial Sloan-Kettering’s satellite facility in Basking Ridge for a follow-up visit with Dr. Boyle, my thyroid surgeon.

The worst part of the trip, it turns out, is the drive up there.  I-287, a ring-road around New York City, is one of the most congested highways in the country.  Today, it’s a parking lot.  Given the time of day, there has to have been an accident or breakdown or something, but I don’t stick around to find out. Already running late, I bail out at the nearest exit (once I creep up to it), and use my GPS to chart out an alternate route on back roads.

I’m an hour late when I get to the place, but they manage to adapt.  First is a thyroid ultrasound – one of the easiest medical tests ever, from the patient’s standpoint.  Lie down on your back on a gurney, in a darkened room, while the technician squirts pre-warmed goo on your neck (that’s a technical medical term, I believe) then slides a sensing device all over your neck for five minutes or so.

It occurs to me, as I’m lying there looking up at the ceiling, that this follow-up test is something like looking for burglars in an empty house.  I no longer have a thyroid gland, and Dr. Boyle was confident, following the surgery, that he’d removed the entire thing, leaving no thyroid tissue behind.  I had the radioactive iodine treatment last fall, just in case.  Today’s visit is likewise one of those “just in case” situations.

The visit with the doctor himself is brief and uneventful. After ascertaining that I’m having no difficulties, and that I’m continuing to see his colleague Dr. Fish, the endocrinologist, to make sure I’m taking the most appropriate daily dose of Synthroid (the replacement thyroid hormone), he tells me I’m doing fine and that he’d like to see me in a year.

That’s encouraging.  I wonder about the necessity of today’s test and consultation, but I suppose it fits into some kind of standard follow-up protocol.

I didn’t think we’d turn up any burglars.  What would they be looking to steal, anyway, after the scorched-earth policy of my thyroidectomy?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

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Anonymous said...

Carl, So glad your visit went so well. Charlene/Harvey

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