My Poor Little Girl

Since the kids' thyroidectomies Sis hasn't had a voice. The surgeon said he checked her vocal cords after the surgery and said everything was fine. The day after the surgery she had a little bit of a raspy voice that made us think she was going to be okay. For the last week and a half though she can barely talk above a whisper. I've started getting worried.

I can't get ahold of the surgeon, any of his associates, or my endocrinologist so I finally emailed MY surgeon and asked him his thoughts. This is the email I got back...

"From your description, it sounds like she has an injury to the recurrent laryngeal nerve. It is likely temporary, but may require 6 mos or more for recovery. Without adequate cord function on one side, the other vocal cord muscles fatigue quickly. Early on, the voice is husky or raspy then becomes breathy with considerable effort to speak. As the cord muscles fatigue, the voice quality becomes a soft whisper. If the injury is partial, the voice is usually a little better in the morning, but quickly deteriorates. Voice rest is important to not over fatigue the voice. This usually allows the swelling of the cord to decrease and have some voice in "reserve" Until the nerve recovers (6 weeks to 6 mos on average) she will have a weak, hoarse voice."

WHAT THE BLOODY HELL??!!! This was suppose to be a simple three hour procedure that turned into a 5 hour nightmare followed by 2 hours in recovery because she wouldn't wake up followed by 2 days of pain because they had her head an an awkward position followed by finding out that BOTH kids had BURNS on their backs from the electrodes and now THIS!!!

My poor daughter. :( I told her everything would be okay. I told her this was no big deal. She trusted me and this is what she got. This isn't how this was suppose to go.