My mother and I The Xavierite
My mother has taught me a lot of lessons throughout my life, however, in the past week, she has taught me the biggest lesson of them all. She taught me how important it is to take care of your health, even if you have a busy work schedule.
About a year ago, my mother was told to get her thyroid taken out due to the severe size that it had grown to, but, due to her constantly working to provide for her family, she put off the procedure and let it grow for too long.
At the beginning of my mother’s journey regarding her thyroid, I didn’t understand the tremendous amount of weight that it would have on my mom. I didn’t see my mother having any issues regarding her mental health.
Although, in the last few months, my mother suffered from having numerous health complications since the thyroid is located at the neck, underneath the voice box. With the size of her thyroid, she was forced to consider options going forward. After a while, she struggled to breathe while doing daily tasks like driving to work.
In the beginning of August, my parents realized how difficult it was becoming for my mom to live a normal life. She and my father decided it was finally time for her to go forward with the procedure.
My mother called me to explain how badly it felt to do simple tasks. She told me that she horribly wanted to take out her thyroid so that he can feel like herself again.
Throughout the appointment process, the doctors explained to my mom how bad it was to have a thyroid that big for someone of her age. They told her that if she had come in sooner, the surgery would have been less risky, since her thyroid weighed twice its original size.
When she heard how bad the state of her thyroid had gotten, she was relieved to know that soon, she would not be in pain and could breathe normally again.
On Tuesday, Sept. 24, my mother had surgery to remove her thyroid. Although she was terrified by the risks of the surgery, she knew she had to go through with it. One of the major risks included the possibility of her vocal cords being damaged since her thyroid was covering them which would affect her livelihood.
Luckily my mother came out of the operating room with no damage to her vocal cords, but it was a risk she could have avoided if she had done her procedure earlier.