OPE! Mixtape #58: Parathyroidectomy, Part 2

I learned a lot about my neck this month

Welcome to OPE!, the newsletter by writer and music journalist Brady Gerber. This is where I curate the week’s best links and songs, along with various musings on life. All typos are intentional.

Well, hello there. How are you?

So yes. Picking up from last week.

I had a Parathyroidectomy, a fancy way of saying that I had pretty intense neck surgery to remove one of my parathyroid glands due to having primary hyperparathyroidism … another fancy way of saying that one of my parathyroids was producing too much calcium, which has been throwing my body out of sync. According to my doctors and all the new literature I’ve been reading within the past year, all this built-up calcium, if left unchecked, would put me in more danger of more severe health risks down the road. Thus surgery.

I didn’t realize I had primary hyperparathyroidism until a series of routine blood tests during a check-up. (Folks, do your annual physicals). It’s pretty rare for someone as young as me to have this condition; it’s more common for folks to have it in their 70s or 80s. My doctor shared with me too that plausible symptoms from primary hyperparathyroidism included heightened symptoms of anxiety and depression, the latter I’ve been wrestling with for the past few years. I’m not going to blame my entire depression on having too much calcium in my body, yet it did make me think of how often I’ve struggled with depression-like symptoms for almost my entire life, even when I finally started taking antidepressants a year ago. There’s now a realistic chance that this primary hyperparathyroidism has been inside me for much longer than I realize and which, because of its rarity among people my age, was never considered a serious consideration by my past doctors as something to explore.

Since I was young enough to bounce back from having a parathyroid gland taken out of my neck and letting my other parathyroids level out my calcium, and since addressing the issue would, in theory, cause an immediate benefit to my health, my doctors recommended surgery.

And so it went.

Everyone at the hospital was wonderful, and everything seemed to work out.

The recovery also went as planned. I’m glad I was able to take the past weeks off to sleep and recover, though I will add that it’s tough trying to sleep with a sensitive neck. There were some hard days. The physical pain was the worst in the first couple of days, but the hardest part ended up being how for over two weeks, all my energy disappeared. Even when I could go on walks and do things away from the bed or couch, I felt like a zombie. After two weeks, I had moments of panic. Am I going to be this tired for the rest of my life? And then I would go back to sleep.

The energy is finally back as I write these words, though I’m still mindful of not stressing or putting any pressure on my neck. I’m still staying away from exercising except for my usual long walks, and I’m technically not allowed to do any heavy lifting.

Still, It’s crazy today to write that for the first time in maybe five years, maybe since living in NYC during the COVID lockdowns, I feel fully rested. I missed writing a lot, but I was able to keep myself busy catching up on movies, reading, playing PlayStation, getting back into meditation, and doing some serious soul-searching on how to embrace this newfound clarity and sense of peace, and see if I can change some habits and sustain this recovery feeling as I get back into my typical routine. Part of all this new, calm positivity may be those previously-mentioned depression symptoms naturally fading away now that my body has “corrected” its internal logic, or maybe I’m just well rested and glad that, noticeable neck scar aside, the surgery was successful. (It’s a cool neck scar, I swear.) It’s probably a combination of the two. But right now I have this rare happiness that I can only describe as the feeling of coming back from vacation and not feeling like I need another vacation to bounce back from vacation. I can just … exist.

And I can come back to y’all and this newsletter! I have some fun ideas coming up the pipeline and will update y’all when the time is right. It’s good to be back.

But enough about all that. Here are this week’s best links and songs …

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