Parathyroid Gland

Located behind the thyroid. It controls all calcium levels in our body. Calcium controls many organ systems and is the only element with it's own regulatory system, parathyroid gland. If one of the four nodules on the prathyroid gland gets messed up a lot of things go bad. Especially if it has a tumor on it. It's hard to detect but you take enough blood tests they will show things wrong and it's almost always a tumor. As it grows the body deteriorates and it will affect a lot of vital things in the body. You can have surgery in a lot of places and they will remove the nodules but there are only a few places that will remove the tumor and leave the rest of the nodules alone so you can return to a normal life.

Last Wednesday I flew to the Norman Parathyroid Center in Tampa for a Thursday morning 5am surgery. Teresa gave me a ride to Grand Junction for a flight to Denver and then Tampa. The flight took off late because of weather in Denver and when I got to Denver I had missed the Tampa flight. I couldn't get to Tampa until 10:45 am and there were a lot of people waiting for me at the Thyroid Center. I ask Teresa to find me the first plane that lands in Tampa in the morning. That required me to fly to New Jersey at midnight and then to Tampa. I did the three hours and thirty seven extra minutes to New Jersey to get into Tampa 45 minutes earlier than any other flight. Except when I got to Newark at 5:30am a storm hit and we spent 45 minutes while they de-iced the plane getting me into Tampa at 10:15 a.m.

I called the hospital and they said to get over there right now so I walked in with my luggage, got a standing ovation (not from patients) for how hard I tried to get there and then they began prepping me, blood tests, and hooked me up to a lot of medical devices. After three or four hours I got wheeled into the operating room where they opened a one inch or so incision in my throat and took a tumor off one of my nodules, sewed me up, and somewhere around 6pm they wheeled me out the front door, called a taxi to take me to my hotel I was suppose to have gotten to the day before. I took some monster pills and slept good.

I checked out early, got to the airport early, caught a Denver flight five hours early, caught a Grand Junction flight four hours early and called Teresa from Grand Junction and caught a ride back to Base Camp with my friend Jax sitting on my lap the whole three hours. I ask the doctor what happens now and he said "Have a good rest of your life." We'll never meet again. I feel good.