And the story continues...
My sister's surgury turned out to be more complicated than we originally thought. She is home and is doing well, but she ended up having a second surgury this afternoon.
Renee' had 2 nodules on her thyroid, one on the left side and one on the right side. A biopsy was done on each of the nodules and only one of them came back abnormal. It wasn't cancerous, just abnormal. The doctors decided that they needed to go in and remove the half of her thyroid with the abnormal nodule and they would only take the entire thryoid if the other half looked questionable. Through some errors on the pathology report, the "bad" nodule was listed as being on the right side instead of the left side. When the surgeon went in, he saw this large nodule on the right side and remove it and thought the left side looked normal (apparently the "bad" nodule was really just a mass of tissues and not a full blown nodule) and so he didn't take the left side. It was only this morning when Renee' started questioning exactly which side they took and what side the "bad" nodule was on that they realized they had taken the wrong side out. She was sent back into surgury and the remaining part of her thyroid was taken out.
All in all, they would have had to take the entire thyroid out even if they had the correct pathology report, so she didn't loose a functioning half of her thyroid, but they wouldn't have had to operate twice in 24 hours. Apparently, this is one of those situations where they should have double checked with Renee' before the surgury to verify which side she thought was the bad side and checked it against the pathology report.
Like I said, she's home and she's doing fine. She has been knocked down a little bit more than most thyroidectomy patients are normally, but she'll be ok.
Wow. It's been a stressful week!
Renee' had 2 nodules on her thyroid, one on the left side and one on the right side. A biopsy was done on each of the nodules and only one of them came back abnormal. It wasn't cancerous, just abnormal. The doctors decided that they needed to go in and remove the half of her thyroid with the abnormal nodule and they would only take the entire thryoid if the other half looked questionable. Through some errors on the pathology report, the "bad" nodule was listed as being on the right side instead of the left side. When the surgeon went in, he saw this large nodule on the right side and remove it and thought the left side looked normal (apparently the "bad" nodule was really just a mass of tissues and not a full blown nodule) and so he didn't take the left side. It was only this morning when Renee' started questioning exactly which side they took and what side the "bad" nodule was on that they realized they had taken the wrong side out. She was sent back into surgury and the remaining part of her thyroid was taken out.
All in all, they would have had to take the entire thyroid out even if they had the correct pathology report, so she didn't loose a functioning half of her thyroid, but they wouldn't have had to operate twice in 24 hours. Apparently, this is one of those situations where they should have double checked with Renee' before the surgury to verify which side she thought was the bad side and checked it against the pathology report.
Like I said, she's home and she's doing fine. She has been knocked down a little bit more than most thyroidectomy patients are normally, but she'll be ok.
Wow. It's been a stressful week!
2 Comments:
That's a tough experience, I'm glad she made it home.
(Mary) I'm glad to hear that she's home and doing well.
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