Alive and kicking

I should have said sooner, not that anybody following my blog doesn't have me on his friends list on Facebook, but still.

I survived. At great cost, but I did.

I have my voice. I'll never sing again, but I am still able to speak. I didn't even have to relearn it, which is a relief. But I can't talk too long as it is taxing and my voice will go away. Wonderful, just wonderful.

The great cost? The surgeon, bloody moron as he is, removed a "harmless little lymph node". As it turns out, as lab states, it was my parathyroid. A hormone gland I am missing dearly.

I have to take 6 pills because of that, every day, for the rest of my life. Since it's not something that grows back, I'm royally f*cked until I die. I am constantly low on calcium and magnesium AND parathyroid hormones, and there is little to no chance of ever being able to get pregnant/carry out a pregnancy.

So... no kids. Ever.

I also experience numbness in hands and feet, thanks to the loss of my parathyroid. That will never go away either.

So... now I'm taking about 16 pills a day, am missing not one but two hormone glands and I have a godawful gash around my neck, because this time the surgeon didn't give a rat's ass to patch me up properly and it looks bad. Really bad. Joker bad.

And the worst part is, over here, in my little country the surgeon walks away scot-free, and I can't even sue him, because even if they mess up and it results in your death, they win. Nobody cares about little poor patients who were misdiagnosed or died from a surgeon's error, so someone who got their voice and life fucked up wouldn't get a dime.

As soon as they carted me back to my room I started choking, going into low-calcium induced shock and the fucking surgeon didn't even call the endocrinologist (hormone doctor) on call to check what was wrong with me. They had to transport me with a wheelchair around the hospital, it was so bad. And they kept forgetting giving me my daily calcium pills. *And* they refused to hand them over, never believing that I can in fact count.

A week after the operation I was let out, after that I had to spend another week in bed so as to not open up the godawful, disfiguring wound on my neck, I went to my local doc and asked for a blood test, as I was really really going numb, not just my hands and feet but my tongue, tip of my nose, practically everywhere.

That evening my doc called and told me to go to the oncology's endocrinologist next morning, she will be waiting for me, I will be her first patient. As it turns out, I narrowly missed turning into a vegetable with lots of brain damage.

And over here in Absurdistan, they can do this to you. And nobody cares. They can murder you, ruin your life, cut out the healthy organs you still need by mistake, and they get to walk away without any repercussions.

And this pisses me off like nothing else.

And this is why, after my second godawful round of radiation therapy in the oncology's cellar is done (gods, please let it be the last, they never clean the rooms, it stinks of piss and the nurses treat us like we have the plague), I will say goodbye to this country and leave for another. Somewhere where people have rules and rights and doctors are held accountable if they mess up.

I just hope I can find a job and not stay as a kept woman. That'd be humiliating.

Well. I'm going in tomorrow. The date of my operation is Monday, although it can happen anytime... first thing in the morning or noon... hopefully not in the afternoon, but possible.

They'll be removing the rest of my thyroid and all the other stuff the cancer might've spread to in that region. Radiation therapy prolly won't start until I have recovered from this second operation. (Which we could have avoided if the bloody surgeon checked if my thyroid cysts were benign or malign... but he didn't, hence this second op.)

I just hope, that my voice won't be damaged any further than it already has been.
And it is damaged, as the doctor at the laryngology declared yesterday. He said "oh, the vocal chords are compensating nicely" but sure, he doesn't care it's not him who lost his pretty voice and ends up screeching instead of talking, so thanks, but no thanks.

All I can do is ask the doc to pay more attention to my vocal chords this time and hope against hope that I will be able to speak when I wake up after the operation. I don't know what I will do if I wake up and I'm unable to make a single sound.

I mean then and there. Everything I've learnt, both teaching and tourist guiding requires speaking, I literally built my career on my voice functioning, and I don't even have my nice speaking (and singing) voice anymore.

Sure, I could sue if they render me mute, but it's really not what I want. I want my voice, dammit. I don't want to lose any more than what I had already, and I don't want any more bad news.

Yes, it could happen, but I really don't want to lose what remains of my voice. I can't talk loudly, not to mention scream (ha, they can't hear me a room away, I need to clap my hand if I want to be heard) so at least I wish to keep this.