And so the saga draws to a close.
That was a lot easier than I thought it would be. Anaesthetic worked like a charm, I was in the recovery room before I knew I was asleep. The procedure went exactly fine, and according to mom they took out something about the size of a golf ball.

Woke up with my neck taped over and barely conscious, but not really in that much pain. The guy next to me wasn't doing quite as hot, I kept hearing him moaning and flailing about. One of the nurses had to deliver a gentle but firm "Sir, you're going to have to stop moving around or you're going to bleed to death." Apparently he later threatened to make another nurse his husband, or so I heard from said nurse when they wheeled my bed up to the eleventh floor penthouse suite hospital room. Not sure how that worked out for them.

Mom spent the night with me, although Dad stayed on until dinner. It helped to have someone running around for me, for the first night I could barely sit up on my own without anything jerking the wrong way.

(Also one of the night nurses taking my blood to check calcium levels was an ex-Navy medic. With tattoos on his arms and everything. That was pretty cool.)

They let me out around eleven thirty the next morning, after much bureaucratic nonsense-we could have left at seven, technically, but there was paperwork and tests and other such suchness and we weren't out until nearly noon. The pain meds appear to be doing their work, although I'm still sleeping rather fitfully.

Not that I'm comfortable, mind you, swallowing and speaking is still a bit awkward and my voice has temporarily gone up about an octave due to the fact that the thyroid is (or was, I suppose) nestled up against the laryngeal nerves. Also I can't really raise my head too far up without it being painful, which makes most positions unfriendly to my spine. But it's not so bad.

Not that it stops my granma from playing one-up in the pain and distress department, but that's granma.