About three weeks later I had an appointment with an ENT. He said they could do a biopsy but I suggested it might be a waste of time and money considering the men2a and I’d have a 50% chance of having that mutation and have to get the thyroid out anyways. Waited until he got information about the genetic test from my brother’s doctor. Got the test and it came back saying I have the mutation. Had another appointment with my ENT and scheduled surgery for the next time Molly had vacation since she can’t just take off work because we are not married and she wouldn’t do it if we were.

During that time I also had to do a blood test for a pheochromocytoma and a 24 hour urine test. Keeping a bottle of piss is not fun and even worse is the fact that it had to be kept in the refrigerator. If I would have had the pheo that would have had to have been dealt with first. Normally they only effect a few people per million but they do occur 50% of the time with men2a I believe.

Next was the CT scan. One of the neck and one of the abdomen to confirm that I did not have a pheo. The girl that did the CT scan was asking me the normal questions and then she asked have you ever had cancer. I laughed and said I think that’s what we’re looking for. She said I hope not and I said it’s pretty much inevitable at this point but will have it taken out of me as soon as the doctor can do it.

Appointment with ENT the next day to go over the results. Confirmed I had the men2a mutation. Assumed the tumor was medullary thyroid cancer and said the lymph nodes looked OK but wanted to do a total thyroidectomy and central dissection. Did some paper work and scheduled surgery. Tests and CT scan showed no evidence of a pheo so I could proceed with the thyroid surgery. I went home and began to drink to celebrate having the date set and no pheo yet. I got shit faced. I have not had a drink since then figuring it would be a good idea to be as clean and healthy as possible until after surgery.

Began going back to the gym and doing cardio. I hate cardio but I thought it would be a good thing to do to prepare my body to heal. I had been avoiding excising until I got the pheo results. I continued to go to the gym until 2 nights before surgery. The night before I wanted to be well rested. I hardly slept that night. I was not worried but I was excited about the possibility of putting this all behind me.

Woke up the morning of surgery in a very positive mood. Got a shower, went on Facebook a little bit then it was time to go. My ENT was a bit late due to an emergency but I was still calm. Anesthesiologist asked me some questions. All the answers were pretty much no. Then he asked if I needed anything to calm me down. I said no. I was more calm than I have been in a long time. As they were pushing me to the Operating room I asked them to push me out the door and down the hill out side. They laughed and said no because there is not enough room for them to ride. I said we can just get more beds. I also said I picked the wrong day to do this since it was going to be a nice day outside and it was our first chance of thunderstorms.

Got into the operating room still calm. Thought they had some neat equipment in there. They asked if I needed anything to calm me down and I again said no. Next thing I knew I was breathing oxygen and could feel a burning sensation traveling up my arm.

Next thing I was aware of the nurse said everything went well. I said thank you and said the doctor must be good. That’s when she told me the doctor had taken out her thyroid for cancer. I asked her if it hurt because I felt no pain at all, just a little tightness and she said that’s what she felt.

I had to spend the night in the hospital so they could watch my calcium levels. They brought me food about an hour after I got to my room. When I mentioned I hadn’t had coffee the nurse was nice enough to bring me two coffees and she said she understands. They kept having to bring water too. That night A different nurse disconnected my iv since I was drinking enough. She did the last calcium test that night and told me that I’d probably be going home tomorrow and that she wouldn’t see me anymore. She thanked me for being nice. I hardly slept because of sitting up but that’s what they wanted to do. I never had any pain and never took anything for it. Just the back of my neck was a little stiff from sitting up I guess.

I finally got to sleep and the doctor woke me up of course I finally fell asleep about half an hour before he came in. He said He was pleased with the surgery and said they had to re-implant one parathyroid and he couldn’t say he didn’t take any others but didn’t think he did. He said he took the lymph nodes and they looked good but pathology was testing them and would go over that with me in a week then put me on thyroid replacement hormone then. He was pleased with my calcium levels and I could go home. Of course that is when I found out the phone in my room was broken. Naturally that’s the one time Molly forgot her cell phone too. She had gone to the gym to run. The nurse called for me and ordered me breakfast.

When Molly got to the hospital to pick me up I signed out. When I got up to walk out I felt a little iffy but that was just from not getting up for 24 hours. Went home and pretty much was careful about moving my neck but the next day I went and got the drain removed, we went at the store and saw Molly’s grand kids. They were a little weird about my “boo boo” but that’s pretty much to be expected.

One week later I had my followup visit with the surgeon. He said everything looked great. Pathology said the tumor was Medullary thyroid Cancer. All ten lymph nodes showed no evidence of cancer and he was pleasantly surprised by this.

I had a couple of very days where I was extremely fatigued when I first started the levothyroxine but other than that I have just plain felt great. Once the couple of days of fatigue passed I was back to the gym. Just did cardio for the first week. Last week was the first I’ve tried weights and I started very light to see if I would have any problems with the motions. All is good.

On nice days we’ve been walking to and from the gym and that’s about a mile each way. Monday we walked to the gym then after we were done walked to get supper at Isaac’s which is another couple of blocks East. Last night we walked to the gym then from the gym to cvs to pick up my prescription then home from there. About 3.6 miles total so I’m thinking I ought to be able to get back into hiking once I am sure I will not just run out of energy a couple of miles from the car.

I had a follow up with my regular doctor this week and he said the scar looks awesome. He said I’m in great health.

As a test I’ve sent some emails to myself and they have yet to arrive and it’s been about a week.  Nothing about them being rejected either.  It would be nice to know these things.  because I host my brother’s business website.  They don’t use me for email but if they did it could potentially be costing them business.

I also find sending email through them to be unreliable.  half the time when I go to send email through my comcast account I cannot even log in.

Their new webmail is painfully slow and ugly.  That’s just my opinion though and I was never really a fan of webmail.

As much as I complain about their email I cannot complain at all about their high  speed internet service.  It’s really pretty rare to have any issues with the connection and if I do it’s usually resolved within a few minutes.

Really People all it takes is a little hard work and you can do it too! It will take more than 2 minutes a day and no you can’t eat big sized happy meals every day but if you just do the work and eat better you’ll end up healthier and happier.

I’m not saying everyone should give up the crappy food you enjoy but you could cut back on it a lot and still have it once in a while and enjoy it.

I know I’ve lost weight and certainly feel better when going to the gym which I am unfortunately not doing so much lately for another reason but once that issue is dealt with I am truly looking forward to getting back into it.

It’s really just like anything else in life though to lose weight. There is no quick fix that will work. It’s just about making better choices and working hard.

I am not a christian myself or even religious in any way for that matter but I find it hard to believe that Jesus if he were to exist would want people to go spending money they don’t have to buy material things to give to someone. Why do the outspoken Christians attack this rather than people who just simply have different beliefs than they do?

I’m sorry but I think that Christ should be taken out of Christmas if Jesus is as they seem to think he is since it goes against who he was and what he did.

I understand they are a business and their goal is to make money. If they want to make money from me they need to give me something worth paying for and not the poorly written error filled stuff they publish. Also I would prefer it to be politically neutral. If I wanted “conservative” news I would turn on faux news. I expect facts in news so I could make my own educated decisions. I am able to make educated decisions and don’t need someone to tell me what’s right.

It begins with my girlfriend and I going to Old Navy in Lancaster because she wanted to check it out and I did too.  I took a quick look but nothing really interested me but she was finding clothes for her so she kept looking and had to go try them on.  I decided to go wait in the car.  The problem is due to my poor vision I could not find the care in the parking lot even using my hand held monocular.  No problem, I figured rather than wandering around the parking lot and getting in someones way I figured I would go wait by the door.  The weather was beautiful so why not enjoy being out side.  I continued off and on using my hand held monocular to try to locate the car because I felt like sitting down but just wasn’t seeing it.  turns out an SUV was blocking it from my view.

I stood there for maybe 15 minutes then I heard her voice calling me from the parking lot so I was looking for you and next thing I know I sense two people walking towards me and one says “I want to talk to you!”  I also sensed a third one walking up behind me and thought I was about to get robbed  so I started walking away. When I turned towards the two I hear “We got a call saying your were using
binoculars to check people out” and they wanted to know why. or something similar to that. I was completely stunned that anyone would even question it.

That is when my girlfriend was there and said “He’s blind.” The one man said that’s a good reason.. Still having and attitude he asked who she was and she said my his girlfriend.  They seemed ok with that but still having an attitude then wanted my address and phone number.. I asked do you really need my address and that’s when I realized they were police because I saw the police car right behind them.

It would have been nice if they would have identified them selves as a police officer when asking for the information, especially considering I had done absolutely nothing wrong.

I really truly appreciate the person calling the police and embarrassing me in front of a busy store for just trying to catch a glimpse of the world that they surely take for granted but I will never get to see and enjoy. I like to see the little things like the colors of cars that my be going past out on the street or the seagull I heard fly overhead or try to see an airplane that’s passing overhead.  At one time I could see all of those things with the

monocular but my cornea transplant did not work out forever and I opted not to try another one to let someone else with better odds have a chance to see. I also can understand the police offficer’s attitude when they first got there but it certainly would have been nice to have them identify themselves as a police officer before asking for my address. I don’t typically give that to random strangers  I couldn’t see them well enough to tell they were plus the three of them seemed to be dressed differently.  An apology would have been nice and much appreciated as a confirmation I did nothing wrong even though I believe I didn’t.

Thank you for making me feel ashamed to go out in public.  I am getting over it but it’s going to take time.  Thank you for having the balls to ask me what I was doing yourself considering most people can tell right away that I am visually impaired.

When I am no longer embarrassed about this ordeal I guess I can add a parking lot to the places I am supposed second guess whether I should look around or not (even if that is to help me see cars coming to cros the street where people don’t pay attention to where they are driving.)  Also on that list is the movie theater  because I get harassed there during the movie that I paid to  see about using a camera.  I have been questioned by security at the mall too because they do not allow cameras yet thousands of people walk through a day with camera phones and are not bothered  I told the Security guard in a nice way about that actually laughing at the irony of it.  he was very appoletic and nice the whole time.  The list could go on.

All I want to do is lead a normal life as independently as possible.  I want to use the tools hat are available to me to be able to find things and see things with out having to ask someone for help.

I absolutely hate captchas.  It’s nice that sites try to block spammers and all but passing the responsibility on to the user in such a difficult manor isn’t the best approach.

For example today I needed to enter one just to enter my google account.  No problem except for the fact that the damn thing was even less legible than my hand writing.  They also have an audio option.. I thought great someone finally made them reasonably usable to the visually impaired like myself.  Well their sound was so muffled I couldn’t tell the letters from the background noise.  Thanks for nothing.

It only took me about 10 tries to get in by trying to read them holding my magnifier to the screen.  Thanks for the inconvenience and waste of my time.