Post-Surgery Detox

I had always thought of surgery as purifying – removing the bad stuff from your body. But I’m having doubts about that. Since my surgery earlier this week, I have had a raspy cough, probably the result of having a breathing tube down my throat during the surgery. For 24 hours I had an IV bag dripping who-knows-what into my veins. Then there was the painkiller with codeine. And the anti-nausea drug to combat the effect of the codeine. Not to mention the anesthesia, which can linger in your body for days. And I was wondering why even muscles that I didn’t know I had were tense and sore as I went for my weekly massage today. Oy vey! as my massage therapist would say – no small wonder!

We have developed this wonderful ritual of having a cup of tea prior to my massage every Sunday morning. This morning’s tea was accompanied by a delectable sample of her culinary efforts all day yesterday with her Puerto Rican roommate – a little fruitcake. Ordinarily I would turn up my nose at fruitcake – you know the kind with the bright green and bright red yucky fruit in them? But this was no ordinary fruitcake. It contained pecans and crystallized ginger soaked in Myers rum. So needless to say, I got on the massage table already quite satiated and feeling considerably less pain.

My massage therapist has hands that track pain and tightness the way a good bird dog tracks its game. She immediately figured out that my whole lymph system was brimming over with toxins – residue from my ordeal in the hospital. She spent a lot of time on my neck and shoulders and scalp and even my face. She found other lymphatic overloads in the lymph nodes of my legs and showed me how to continue to get rid of them at home. I could almost see the ugly sludge being squeezed out of my poor body. I felt so much cleaner when I left than when I arrived.

We talked a lot about what was in store for me. I voiced my concern about putting more chemicals into my body in the form of the radioactive iodine if in fact there was no evidence of new papillary cancer in the last lobe of my thyroid. I’m just not convinced that I want to be this proactive if there is no real evidence. My body is so ready just to be normal and healthy and free of anything that doesn’t belong in it. Besides, I want to eat cake on my birthday, not be on a no-iodine diet that excludes just about everything that I like to eat. If you are reading this and have knowledge or even an opinion about this treatment, please leave me a comment or shoot me an e-mail message.