Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Statistics, blah!

Ronny met with his surgeon up at Huntsman today for what we thought would be a simple post-op follow up.  He had blood work done last week with his regular doctor for his thyroid and they ran a blood calcium then.  We noticed the results were still on the high side.  His surgeon had those results today and was concerned that it was still so high.  He said that number should have come down after taking his tumor out.  He is concerned Ronny may have another tumor that he didn't see when he was in surgery.  He ordered more blood work before Ronny left specifically looking at his calcium again and also his pth level.  If his pth level is higher than 40ish that probably indicates a second tumor.  If that is the case Ronny will get referred back to the endocrinologist for another ultrasound to find it and probably another surgery.  He said he will call tomorrow with the results.  He said the odds of people having 2 of these tumors is around 1%.  I laughed out loud when I heard this as we seem to always be in that 1%.  I was a math major in college and I HATED statistics, given all these crazy numbers they keep throwing at us my opinion still hasn't changed!!!  However if we could turn these numbers into something like say the roulette table we could make a killing in Vegas, maybe then we could use that money to pay off all these hospital visits!

1 comments:

Jennifer said...

I would hate statistics if I were you also. You always seem to beat the odds.