Total Thyroidectomy and Breastfeeding

We found this stupid lump when I was pregnant, but there wasn't much we could do about it at the time, so we all agreed to wait until after Jodene came. I literally just pretended it wasn't there for months.

A month or so after she came I had a biopsy and we all agreed the thyroid should come out. At the surgical consult for my thyroidectomy I explained to the surgeon that I'd still be breastfeeding when I had surgery. He said I'd have to pump and dump for 48 hours. At the time surgery was weeks away and we were hopeful that Jodene would be taking a bottle by July. At about 5 weeks before surgery she was consistently refusing a bottle, so I started researching and found some great resources that suggested maybe I didn't need to pump and dump for that long, or even at all. I didn't find many stories of nursing mom's having surgery, so I figured I'd put this out there.

About 3 weeks before my surgery I contacted the hospital I'd be having surgery at and asked about breastfeeding after surgery and having my daughter with me overnight in the hospital. I was transferred multiple times, and given a lot of incorrect information. I'd have to pump and dump for anywhere from 1-2 days. My daughter wouldn't be allowed on the floor, I couldn't have her with me prior to surgery, etc.. I was pretty upset and I called the patient advocacy office for the hospital and asked about their policy for nursing moms who need to have surgery.

I got an entirely different response. They got me in touch with the hospital lactation consultant and the nurse manager for the center for women and infants. They were both amazing. The nurse manager from the center for women and infant's helped negotiate with the nurse manager for the surgical recovery floor so we'd have a private room so Jodene wouldn't be keeping a roomate awake, and the lactation consultant helped me research the medications I'd be getting to make sure they were compatible with breastfeeding. The moral here is talk to the right people and don't take no for an answer.

There were some bumps along the way, including the pre-admissions folks, the surgeon, and the anesthesiologist. But with a combo of niceness, determination, and information I was able to get them to agree.

My total thyroidectomy was July 11, and we were able to have Jodene with me and nursing up until wheeling me into the OR, successfuly breastfeed in the recovery room, and have Jodene with me and nursing all through the night and day. It was amazingly sucessful.

 I woke up in recovery and the nurse asked if I was feeling up to nursing. I asked her what medications I had gotten during surgery and they were TOTALLY different than what I had discussed with the anesthesia department 2 days earlier. So... the nurse very kindly called the lactation consultant who checked on all the meds I had gotten and gave us the go-ahead to nurse. What lovely ladies and totally instrumental in making this work. The recovery room nurse even argued with the anesthesiologist who was not on board at all. He wanted me to wait 12 hours to nurse even though this had all been worked out beforehand, and the lactation consultant checked all the meds for us. Eventually it was agreed that I'd be "difficult" and he'd disagree, although he did keep talking loudly about that's not how they do it at Brigham and Women's.

We ignored him, he left and Aaron and my mom helped get her into position and hold her while I was in recovery and the hours after surgery when holding her hurt. We nursed in the laid back or biological breastfeeding position, and with help it was manageable. We brought her mini-cosleeper with us to the hospital and she slept pretty well in it. We also kept her sleep sheep strapped to it, which helped keep her sleeping through the beeps and bumps and nightime visits by nurses. Obviously another adult had to stay overnight with me as I couldn't be her only caretaker, so poor Aaron slept curled up in what looked to be a very uncomfortable chair, and brought her to me when it was time to nurse. Lots of the nurses didn't even know she was there. If she started really crying my mom or Aaron would strap her in the Ergo and take her off the floor so she didn't bother anyone.

I am so grateful that my mom and fantastic husband are so supportive of me and Jodene and breastfeeding. They, along with a great lactation consultant and some very breastfeeding friendly nurses were the people who made this possible. So if you have surgery coming up, just know it can be done with some planning and if you hit roadblocks just look for ways around them and call your office of patient advocates.

I'm Baaaaack.......and I have a baby and thyroid cancer.

Like the bubonic plague, but nicer, I return after a few years of nothing.... Well I was busy. We had some deaths, a pregnancy, and a birth. Lots of smiles, and a few tears, and just life in all its messy gorgeous glory. It kept me from blogging, and frankly with a baby I can't promise I'll blog alot, but I'll at least peek in every now and then.

But now, I'm back. In 2 days I will officially be a stay at home mom. In 3 days I'm having my thyroid removed because of a cancerous nodule. And that's really why I'm back. I have googled and searched and found very little about being a mom, having thyroid cancer, and life post-thyroidectomy. Yes I read all the research articles and all the medical journals I could find. But there were very few people talking about what it was really like after surgery, and what life without a thyroid is like. So I figured I'd share my journey in case anyone else is looking for stories as they experience life with thyroid cancer.

Let me say this:



I am scared.


Scared that there will be some complication, scared that the cancer will be bigger than they think, scared it will hurt, and just plain scared of the unknown.

But I know that no matter what happens, I will be me. I will plow through and handle whatever happens. I'll try to make the best of it, and I'll probably succeed.

but....

for right now, I'm scared of the unknown, ya know?

double combs on a top bar hive

Finally a bee post!

The inside view of one of our top bar hives. This is the back of it.



Bees on new comb, it's very light in color.




Bees on older comb, the comb is more of a yellow/gold. There are some larvae, and capped brood in this photo.




A close up of capped brood and larvae.



More capped brood and larvae on comb that's not so brand new. The raised bullet shaped cells are drone brood.

Since we started with the top bar hives we had a couple bars that the bees had double comb on. Initially our philosophy was to leave it bee. The bees won't do anything that isn't good for them right?! Right. Well eventually we had 4 and in some cases 5-7 bars that couldn't be lifted individually. Not so bad for the bees, but really problematic for us, and totally uninspectable. Here's some pics of what was going on. We figured out that out top bars were too wide and have started replacing all the original bars with narrower bars.



Notice the long peanut shell looking cells at the bottom of the comb, those are queen cells.




Closer view of the queen cells.

As I saw it, we had a few options;

• leave them alone - least invasive, but this would have made the hive inaccessible eventually
• slowly move these double combs out by adding new smaller bars in front of them - less invasive, but it could take awhile and in the mean time the problem is getting worse.
• cut off the double combs and reattach to new narrower bars - involves an incredible amount of intrusion, and as we found out, carnage.

The other situation was those queen cells.....swarm cells, supersedure cells, just in case cells (some were not capped), or was the queen gone entirely and they were trying to replace her? To be honest, I have no idea, initially we thought swarm cells due to their placement on the comb. Our plan was to do a split, moving the old queen and some bees to a new hive and letting the old hive raise a new queen. Simulating what would happen in a natural swarm. Lots of folks say once the bees decide to swarm they'll do it, so we figured on trying to work with it.

Problem was, once we got in the hive we couldn't find the queen, and realized there weren't any eggs, plus we didn't give ourselves enough time to do what we wanted to, and we forgot our smoker, and the bees were incredibly grumpy that day(it was a cloudy day so that probably didn't help). It was a disaster, and after only seperating one bar of double comb we gave up for the day. I also dropped a whole comb full of bees, it was awful. We never did find the queen and have since realized that our hive is queenless, no eggs no new larvae. Good thing we didn't do that split, or maybe they were ready to swarm and we killed the queen during one of our inspections,at any rate it was a disastrous first attempt at cutting off the double combs.

We left them alone for awhile to settle down and to fix all the damage we caused. I was worried that they'd be furious when we went back, or that they'd have left the hive altogether, I wouldn't blame them if they did.. In the meantime, we re-evaluated our plans, for one we realized we should give ourselves double the time we think we need, and if conditions aren't right to mess with the hive we need to just not do it, also don't forget the smoker. We also picked different hair clips, the ones we initially chose were too wide and the bars wouldn't sit right next to each other, causing the bees to have too much space, and yes again make double comb on those bars.....

When we went back the bees were still there, queen cells were all still capped, but no eggs or larvae, so we're hoping they're well on their way to making a new queen. We finished off the job of seperating all the bars with double comb in just a few minutes, and closed the bees up to continue their work.

We'll figure it out eventually, it's a learning process, I just felt bad the bees had to suffer. Still it seems that they are resilient little creatures.

Garden 2011- Progress

So far so good.

Here's a couple things we figured out so far.

• Just laying some dirt on top of the hay and putting seeds or tiny seedlings into it means you have to water constantly. Until the roots are established enough to draw moisture from the soil beneath you risk them drying out and dying. Solution-put in bigger seedlings, deeper in the compost.

• Don't just pile grass on as a top layer because it mats up and forms this impenetrable barrier that water runs off of. Solution- mound grass on and then put hay on top of that.

• This method isn't work free, but it is nearly weed free! I hate weeding and by this time every year my garden is over run with weeds, but not THIS year. Every couple days I pull a blade of grass or two, that's it.

• Letting go of all the ideas about rows and how far apart things have to be is liberating. This garden may not be traditionally beautiful, but I've really found the beauty in how certain plants grow together. How the close growing plants help keep the weeds down, and how much the worms and other insects love our undisturbed soil.

• Companion planting works! See brassicas in the following photos....

Ok done with the words time for PICS.....





Directly in front is horehound, to the right is our sage, and in between the two is lavender. Somewhere in there is some rosemary, dill, lemon balm, and persistent mint growing through many layers of cardboard and mulch.



Swiss chard, egyptian onions gone wild, and peppers getting killed by slugs!



Baby tomatoes and pole beans, mixed in there are onions and carrots.



Broccoli and cauliflower

Broccoli in the herb bed....noticed it is untouched by the slugs...

More brassicas (kohlrabi) not in the herb bed, getting murdered by slugs... companion planting seems to be working.

Again hardly touched by slugs in the herb bed.

Pumpkins..... I think...

Our first head of broccoli forming.

lavender blooming

Sage blooming

Side note:
We gave up TV again this summer. Cable's off today, hopefully this summer is as busy and productive as last.

Next up:

That sauerkraut post I promised you, AND bee updates....seriously..... now that I have no TV I have more time to blog....=0)

Garden 2011 - no till/permaculture

Last year we didn't have much of a garden, but over the winter Aaron and I did some reading and planning.

In late February I started planting seeds, this was my first batch. I planted more and more throughout March and April...and nurtured them alot... they were needy little seedlings.

This year we decided to use raised beds, since our previous attempts at no til were kind of a mess/failure.

So we designed some beds, bought some fir, and Aaron got to work setting up our "no till/permaculture/lasagna gardening/no dig/sheet mulching/whatever you wanna call it" raised beds. It's called so many different things and there's alot of variations.  The idea we're working on here is creating some natural balance, not digging up and disturbing the soil, using the compost to keep the weeds down and feed the plants. 

In early April we set up the beds right over the grass,and put cardboard around any of the perennials (hopefully killing the very invasive oregano and peppermint that had taken over), and layered it on top of the grass in the other beds.

Going around the sage and lavender.

Next came the layers of wet newspaper, going around the egyptian onions.

On top of that went some sawdust and then some composted goat manure that we got for next to nothing.

then lots of old, bad hay (hoping all the seeds are dead at this point), which was also dirt cheap.

Then a layer of grass clippings from our lawn. (We haven't used pesticides or fertilizers other than chicken manure in over 2 years on our lawn, so the clippings are safe to use) That's pretty much it, there's no set group of materials to use. The idea is to use what you have/can find. the only guideline we've been following is to  layer "brown" (carbon) and "green" (nitrogen) materials at about a 3:1 ratio. If you're interested here's a list of what's brown and what's green.

I pushed aside the top layer of hay/grass and planted my seedlings directly into the hole I made, along with some compost, then tucked it in.

Seedlings hardening off outside.

The socks that took forever = DONE!

I finally finished them while I was on vacation in South Carolina.



......uh but I forgot to take a picture....yeah seriously......



So glad to be done, sent these off to my mom, and have already started a new pair.

Bees Bees Bees

So today we went and picked up our bees from warm colors apiary, and installed them in our top bar hive.

This is not a how to, we messed up a few things.

One: we didn't uncork the queen box.

We ended up going back in and uncorking the queen's box, and we decided to shake the bees into the hive, they were just not coming out.

Also we're going back tomorrow to give them more sugar water.

They were very gentle, no stings at all. And I had so much fun, and they seemed to like their new home, they settled in very quickly.

Yogurt FAIL

So I tried my hand at making yogurt, it was....interesting.... and the results were edible, I think. The dogs didn't get sick at any rate........

I started out with 1 quart of raw milk, stuck it in the crockpot, turned it on low for 2 1/2 hours.

Then I turned off the slow cooker and let it sit for 3 hours.

I then added my store bought yogurt culture. (this could have been my problem, because I think I should have taken some milk out, mixed in the starter, and then mixed it all together)

Lid back on, and wrapped it all nice and cozy to keep it warm, and let it sit for 8 hours.

(yeah, it felt weird to let warm milk just sit out on my counter, kinda skeeved me out to be honest)

In the morning I ended up with this beige, runny, lumpy mess.

I refrigerated it in the hope it would firm up, and it did, a little....

However, it remained beige and lumpy...

Icky yogurt FAIL

Fed it to the dogs, they loved it....

Not making yogurt again..........until I get an actual yogurt maker, hint hint Santa...

the socks that took forever.....

See these socks? These pretty knee socks?

They are taking FOREVER, I started them sometime in early December and have yet to finish them. Granted I haven't been knitting every day, but still, I'm sort of "done" with them.

Except...... they're a gift for my Mom, a Christmas gift actually, I gave her a promise of socks for Christmas, LOL. So I can't be "done" just yet. Once I get to the heel on the second sock I'll feel like I'm almost there...

When they are FINALLY done, I may have a hard time giving them away.

 I love this color, and I love knitted knee socks.

I'm just not fond of knitting them right now.

Is it Spring yet?

Well it might not be Spring yet, BUT I started some seeds last night.

Just some early flowers, but it's so exciting, every day is longer, and the sun feels a little warmer. I love Winter but every year around the end of February I get to a point where I can't wait to start digging in the ground, and I'm so there right now.

We've got big plans for a garden this year. 4 raised beds using the no-till gardening method (I'll explain more later), lots of companion planting, and hopefully very litle weeding. We both hate weeding, and we're hoping we mulch enough this year that the weeds are not able to grow.

Take a look:

Pretty exciting; petunias, scabiosas (prettier than it sounds), pansies, a variety of herbs, snapdragons, and yes some apple seeds. We'll see what happens. They have a nice sunny spot on our sun porch, and a nice little heating mat to keep that soil warm enough to quickly germinate.