I noticed this to some extent when I had the surgery in June, but this time somehow the experience is harder to go through.
As we approach the time when I'll do the ablation process, I can feel my world slowly getting smaller and smaller with each day that passes. It starts in small ways -- the expected limitations from withdrawing the thyroid hormone changing the way my brain works and the way my body feels. Then losing my clearance to drive, making me dependent on others for flexible transportation. But I figured I could always take the bus outside my front door to Bayshore or something if I wanted to get out on my own.
Last Friday I was at the old office and decided that instead of waiting for someone to drive me home, I'd just walk. It's only 3KM (2.8, according to the GPS track I made of the walk) so no big deal -- I once walked in Toronto from the Queensway to the foot of the CN tower, a walk of about 3 hours, just because I had the time to kill (and OK because I didn't understand the way the buses in Toronto worked) -- so no big deal. Well that turned out to be a mistake as I was exhausted all weekend from that.
Now, walking up the hill twice a day with the boys for school is getting to be too much and I need naps in the afternoon.
I can't consider the bus ride without an escort, just in case, and I can't walk down to the store at the end of the street by myself without an escort, just in case. (Of course the diet means there's no point in walking down to the end of the street these days since I can't eat or drink anything once I get there.)
It is frustrating, especially considering that I still have a week of this diet and no hormone -- and the hardest part, the ablation, is still to come. For 48 hours following the radiation does, I have to stick to my room with meals dropped off at the door. No visitors.
For the surgery, it was the same kind of thing, but much faster: last drive the night before surgery, last meal the night before surgery, last drink, then no wallet, no glasses, no watch, no ring, and finally as I was wheeled into the operating theater -- no nothing, just me as a hunk of meat on a table. And then over the following three weeks those things slowly came back to me and my world's boundaries were pushed out again.
At least I know those boundaries will be pushed back out again, that I'm not at a high risk of being permanently restricted.
