Health Update

Saturday, May 9, 2009

To bring everyone up to speed I broke my left foot on January 25th. The ER doc called the fractures "funky" and referred me to a Podiatrist.

After 8 weeks of casts, and absolutely zero signs of healing, my foot doc scheduled surgery for March 19th to install a plate and six screws. I immediately went to my personal physician and asked her to do a complete blood work up -- which is how we discovered my parathyroid glands are master overachievers. Not only were my parathyroid hormone levels through the roof but so were my blood calcium levels.

Until today I have been dealing with three diagnoses: fractured foot, 'hyperparathyroidism' and 'hypercalcemia'. The only way to correct hyperparathyroidism is via surgery to remove the gland that is causing the hypercalcemia.

These two conditions -- Hyperparathyroidism and Hypercalcemia -- kind of go hand-in-hand; the former causing the latter. In my case, these conditions are severe enough to cause me to have either a heart attack or complete heart failure.

Last week I visited the Nuclear Medicine department where they performed several scans of my parathyroid glands. Today I learned the results of those scans from my endocrinologist and it appears that only one of the four glands is affected and a surgical consult has been scheduled for June 1st. Hopefully surgery will be scheduled shortly after that. So far I was hearing everything I expected to hear from the endocrinologist.

What I had not planned on was hearing that I may have to have two surgeries to remove the messed-up parathyroid gland. The first surgery will be "minimally invasive" (outpatient, local anesthetic, very small incision on my neck.) I also was not expecting the doc to tell me there was a high probability that they would have to do a second, invasive surgery (under general anesthesia, large incision), to remove it. At that point I'm thinking, "WTF. Why not."

Then it gets better.

The last set of blood work the endocrinologist ordered shows that my immune system is attacking my thyroid (not parathyroid - although named similarly, they have nothing to do with the functions of the other) -- a condition called 'Hashimoto's Disease' (an autoimmune disease).

What this means is my immune system is essentially eating my thyroid gland and will continue to do so until there is nothing left of it.

[Note: The thyroid helps set the rate of metabolism - the rate at which the body uses energy. Hashimoto’s Disease prevents the gland from producing enough thyroid hormones for the body to work correctly.]

Thankfully Hashimoto's Disease can be helped with synthetic thyroid hormone replacement therapy. An ultrasound of my thyroid gland has been scheduled for Monday, May 11th to determine its size.

In two years I have broken three bones (elbow, nose, foot) and, so far, have had two surgeries (nose and foot). Soon I will be having a third surgery. Possibly a fourth.

Does it get any better than this? (That's a rhetorical question, by the way.)