What a difference a year makes

This time last year, I was getting ready to head out to my dad's. September 21st, I believe, I landed in Salt Lake and then we drove up to eastern Idaho to stage for a few days of off-network wandering, heading in and out of Yellowstone, the Tetons, and a few other surrounding places in the region before and afterward. I was on top of the world; I think I've been to Yellowstone officially four times as of that last trip, and I know how lucky I am as most people probably have to regard visiting that sort of place a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Same with seeing both sides of the Tetons without any cloud obfuscation in a 24-hour period, although I do think I've only done that once.

This year, I am lucky to be able to speak and now, as of today, breathe while I walk up a hill. I have to get in touch with the speech therapists to get them to measure my voice and take a look at my folds, but I think they're going to like what they see (and I think I'm going to be able to convince them we don't need to pursue any medications, topical or injectable). I care less about being able to speak. This space has been a good way for me to run my mind, and honestly, even what I had a week or ten days ago would have been more than acceptable for the rest of my life. I'm so very happy that it got better, but I'm even happier than I can probably mow my lawn without making involuntary vocalization wheezes now. I can go up the hills in my neighborhood without losing my breath halfway. I can hold enough air in my lungs to finish sentences like the ones I write here, which is to say 'sentences that are entirely too long and meandering for anyone to bother tracking to their conclusions.'* That is the biggest milestone for me: the ability to function.

To put this here if I haven't put it anywhere else: when people undergo a series of thyroid or neck surgeries, there's a chance they don't recover vocal function. That chance is apparently something like 5-10% for the first surgery, 15-25% for the second, and a dismal 50% for the third. My surgeon stopped telling me that line of thought at three, so I offered the conjecture "then I must be incredibly lucky even considering your notoriety for being good with preserving nerve function." He gave an awkward laugh and effectively said "we don't have enough data, but it sure seems like it." I don't suppose there are many people that have a mobile enough metastasis at a young enough age for a fourth surgery to play into it.

We'll see what exactly the next couple of weeks hold, but it looks like my specific set of edge cases that are my awful neck continue to defy expectations.

* - okay, I admit, I made that one PARTICULARLY bad on purpose.