What Would You Do?

I hate making tough decisions. Time is running short so I have to decide where to have my surgery. My first inclination is to stay here and have my regular surgeon do it. I have a lot of respect for him and he's done three other surgeries on me and hasn't screwed me up yet. However, I realize this is really important and don't want to just rush into it. Everything I've read says that the patients' outcome with this type of cancer is directly related to the skill of the surgeon. The specialist in Kentucky recommends choosing a surgeon that performs at least 20 of these operations per year but preferably more than 30 per year. My surgeon does 20-30 per year, however only about 1/3 of them are performed because of cancer rather than another disease. Apparently having cancer somehow increases your odds of having a complication occur. In case you're wondering some of the complications are loss of feeling in the tongue, the shoulder, and various other places in that region. Also one corner of my mouth may droop permanently or at least for quite awhile because nerves take a really long time to heal and sometimes never heal. The most serious and less likely complication is paralyzation of the vocal cords, called the recurrent laryngeal nerves. If only one of these nerves is damaged it can result in hoarseness that may gradually improve but if both nerves are damaged then it prevents speech and interferes with proper breathing and would require me to have a tracheotomy & talk with one of those little machine things. Not a fun prospect.

So one other option is to go to Houston to MD Anderson. Someone who knows a friend of my mother-in-law is a nurse there and has graciously offered my family the use of her home should I decide to go there. I don't know how quickly they could get me in there but I think their surgeons do quite a bit more of these types of surgeries than my surgeon does. Thyroid cancer accounts for approximately 1-2 % of all cancers so it's kind of rare therefore there aren't many surgeons out there that would call themselves thyroid specialists. There don't appear to be any in Kansas City, even at KU.

I just don't know what to do. I know I'm not supposed to consider cost or convenience but I can't help it. I don't want to leave my kids for a week or more and buy plane tickets and such but I also don't want a hole in my neck. I just know that Owen would be stealing my little talking machine so I couldn't yell at him! I need advice. What would you do?