Recovery - Weird Voice

Not long after I was brought into the recovery room, the nurse that was assigned to me came in to tell me what our plan was: we were looking for three things: 1. Pain management – let’s keep it under control 2. Bathroom – let’s make sure I can go to the bathroom 3. Internal bleeding – let’s make sure my neck doesn’t swell up. She would come to my room every hour to measure my neck. 4. Nausea – let’s make sure I'm not feeling sick. Paul sat in a chair next to my bed – There was another patient bed next to mine but it was empty when they brought me into the room so it was just me and Paul for a bit. Then Claudia came in – she is Paul’s younger sister and she works at UCSF. It was kind of funny because when she came in, she told the nurse to give me morphine. I got scared because when I think about morphine I think about it as a drug that you give to people who are dying so I didn’t want that. Instead, I said that I would take a pill so they brought me a low dosage of Oxycontyn. They also gave me ice chips and those felt great in my throat – especially in combination with the ice pack that was on my neck. My throat was sore and my voice was tired and weak and I felt like I was a little congested so I asked for a throat lozenge. Dr Campbell (the second surgeon) said that it was normal since the breathing tube had those feelers on the outside. He said that there was trauma in my throat. Dr Campbell told me that during the surgery, my laryngeal nerve was damaged. He said that he could tell that my voice was weak and higher pitched than my pre-surgery voice. He said that my thyroid was very sticky and sick which was a result of Hashimotos. He also said that the calcified nodule was pressed right against the nerve and every time they tried to move the nodule, the nerve would move too. It was like they were fused together. Since the breathing tube was able to monitor the health of the nerve, they knew the exact moment that the nerve was injured. It took effort to talk and all that came out was a weird sounding whisper. The nurse brought some food but all I could eat was the honeydew melon. It was delicious and everything else was super gluten-full. I sent Paul & Claudia home because I wanted to nap. I didn’t sleep a whole lot because the lady in the bed next to mine (she came in about 45 minutes after I got into the room) and I started to chat. And it turned out that she knows my boss! She was really sweet and she had a drain after surgery because her thyroid nodule was so big. But her voice sounded like a normal strength voice so it did worry me that my voice was so very weak. The picture below is from the recovery room with the tape measure that made sure I wasn't bleeding internally. The small line under my incision is (I believe) what they used to mark and measure the neck. It is not a second incision.