Night before surgery

I don't want to do this surgery.

I keep repeating that statement to family and friends.  I simply am in no mood to do this surgery.

I think about other people's journey's and I feel like I'm being ungrateful.  There are people suffering who would gladly take my place, but all I can think of is just sleeping in and saying, "the hell with it!", but I can't and I know this is supposed to be the best decision in this process.

I can't stop thinking about my mother.  My mother has Graves Disease. She has had a thyroid issue forever.  I vaguely remember her not being ill, but all I know of her is sickness. I don't want to be like her.

I guess that's my biggest fear.  I am afraid of waking up and being my mother.  I model myself, as a mother, after my own mother.  She was always kind and soft spoken, but when she meant business, her voice would raise and you knew it was time to get in line.  She always made me and still does make me feel like I was a gift from God.  She calls me her miracle baby.  She has always looked at me with love.  Because of my mother, I knew, even before having my own children that a mother's love is never ending, indescribable, and magical. One might ask, why, if she was and is all of those things, then why don't I want to be like her.  The answer is quite simple, she is alive but rarely here with us.  I lost my mother years ago.

My mother cannot follow a conversation.  There are times that she gets so muffled in the cloud of thyroid disease that she is disoriented almost like dementia.  I resented her for a very long time for not being "normal".  It was all so gradual.  First, she just seemed off.  Little things, like a blank stare or continuously asking you to repeat something.  It was like she was in slow motion. Then it sped up and she wouldn't sleep for days. She was always going.  It was like she couldn't control it. There was always something that needed to be done. During her hyper swings, she would develop heart palpitations, but the doctors never found anything wrong, so we all thought she was making it up. When I was about 11 or 12 years old, she put me behind the wheel of her car on a rainy day because they had gotten so bad.  There was no point in her going to the doctor because the test said there was nothing wrong. A few years after that rainy day, I went to visit my mother in the hospital after they put in a pace maker.  She has had a mini stroke.  Her teeth are falling out.  Her hair will not grow. Her bones are brittle and she has a terrible case of OCD.

She does have moments of clarity and I cherish those.  In those moments, I try to tell her to see a different doctor.  I try to tell her all that I have learned, but she just smiles and nods.  She isn't concerned anymore.  She once told me that she knows she's different, but she is okay with that.

So...this is why I am frightened.  They killed her thyroid many years ago and from that point on, I have only gotten snippets of my mother.  Granted, we are like night and day and I don't have the husband she had (my father was a very mean man), so my stress is nothing like hers, but I am still her child and this thyroid disease still came to get me even though I thought I was living a life that wouldn't allow it in.  It still came to get me and now I worry if I will wake up from surgery and be the mother to my children that I was today.

I prayed for my children.  They are like my air.  I want to be engaged in their lives.  I don't want to be a ghost, simply around in the shadows.  I want to be their mommy. I want this shit to be done.  I want to live life, laugh, and be free of this illness.

God, I am begging you to please let me be me when this is all said and done.



If you are reading this, sign this petition for ThyroidChange.  Too many generations have suffered with thyroid disease.  A change needs to happen and we need your help, please.