I read a lot (like A LOT) of blogs in the run up to having my thyroid removed and one of the things I was fearful of was feeling pain. My pain tolerance is quite high, in my opinion, but I hate feeling it and just the thought makes me shudder. Obviously everyone feels pain differently but in honour of officially being 3 weeks post-op, I decided to give my own account of the pain I felt in regards to my thyroidectomy.
I'm just going to get stuck in and say: I didn't feel a thing - it was numb from the moment I woke up. The only thing I felt was some stiffness/tightness of the skin which I would consider an uncomfortable feeling rather than pain. I was given two 500mg paracetamol tablets and one naproxen tablet regularly to help with inflammation and to stay on top of the pain for the two days in hospital but I didn't think I needed it. They issued me these tablets on my discharge but I hardly used them - only when the uncomfortable feeling was getting on my nerves.
For those that don't know, I did have a small plastic tube in my neck to drain any excess fluid from the wound. I knew there was a possibility I would get a drain tube and read a couple blogs with people's accounts of having one. In one particular blog, however, the writer described it in such a way that made me soooooo scared that I would get one too, and I was praying I wouldn't need it. In her blog post, she recalls that she cried when it was being removed so it's safe to say I was p*ssing myself. Honestly though, I didn't feel ANYTHING - and I'm not just saying that. As I said I was taking paracetamol regularly during my stay but to me, I didn't need it. The only thing was that I did roll on it a couple times during my second night but that also wasn't painful; instead it felt more like a tugging sensation rather than pain. Once I fixed it I was fine and went back to sleep again. If anything, the drain was simply annoying rather than painful, because it had to come everywhere with me and I felt kind of bad for the other patients having to see me walking around with drainage fluid in a container every time I had to use the toilet.
The only time I did feel pain was when they removed the tube but it wasn't that bad (maybe 5 or 6/10) and it didn't last - the tube was stitched into my skin so cutting the stitches was painful. The actual process of pulling out the tube wasn't painful but quite uncomfortable because I could feel the end moving inside my neck which wasn't a pleasant feeling. The worst part wasn't the pain but was that, because UCLH is a teaching hospital, I had to hear the nurse explain to a trainee what it was that she was doing at any given moment. That made me anticipate it and I really didn't like that.
All in all, I would honestly rate my pain at 0/10 as to me it didn't hurt, there was only an uncomfortableness when trying to move my head and neck.
I hope you found this helpful and, of course, leave me a comment if you have any questions or if you want, Tweet me @StaciahGreer
Take care! x
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