First Visit With the Oncologist

Instead of scheduling the start of radiation treatments, I'm going back to the surgeon for another followup or two. I need some more healing from the surgery before they start the radiation.

Once the radiation starts, it will be every day for 5 or 6 weeks with a low dose of chemo every Friday. That's probably 2 or 3 weeks away. Patience is not one of my strong points (to put it mildly). I'm getting a bit burned out on how long everything is taking. Actually, it's more than a bit burned out. The only bright spot is that there's nothing growing back where the lump was.

I wasn't ready for the shock of a cancer treatment center waiting room. There were about 30 people waiting for their treatments. Most had someone with them. I will try to have a book to read whenever I go to that waiting room. It's bad enough seeing a husband and wife in their 70's and one of them in a wheel chair. I hope I never see a mother and a child in that waiting room.

I asked if I would lose my ability to taste food and produce saliva. Losing the sensation of taste is probably going to happen. With the radiation centered on my neck, I will probably continue producing saliva, but that's not certain. The doc warned me of a possibility of losing the ability to swallow. If that happens, it's back to a feeding tube.

Huge thanks to so many people

Thank you for your thoughts and your prayers. So much happened so quick and so much changed so quickly that I haven't really had time to digest it or realize exactly what happened.

The entire situation has only taken 9 weeks so far. In that time I've gone from nothing to a diagnosis of Stage 4 cancer to an all clear diagnosis. That's a lot of changes in a short period of time.

At one point I had to consider myself gone from this world as soon as my body figured out it couldn't survive what it was facing. I pretty much accepted that fate, but I was confident I would find a way to survive anything thrown at me. I never had enough time to contemplate not achieving that goal. Waking up in the middle of the night was bad. Waking up was the nightmare. Waking up always reminded me that real life was worse than any nightmare I could ever experience.

When the results of the surgeries were evaluated, the original diagnosis of Stage 4 was proven wrong. The life-threatening risk factors were proven wrong. All evidence at this point in time points toward a 100% recovery with not a single long-term effect or recurrence of this cancer.

I certainly haven't had the time to realize how lucky, fortunate, blessed, or prayed-for that I have been. I always thought I was going to beat it, regardless of how much things were stacked against me.

Getting a pretty much clean bill of health out of it is what I was expecting. It hasn't sunk in yet that I'm one of very few people who gets this kind of a change in their outlook.

I don't want to experience any epiphanies or go on any great crusade now that I have a second chance at living. I just want to enjoy each day and have a greater appreciation and understanding of those who are sharing a day of life with me.

The last post-surgery visit

The surgeon has cleared me for radiation and light chemo treatments. My first visit with the oncologist is April 15, when I will find out about the schedule for post-op treatments. It's taken me about 2 extra weeks after the surgery to get cleared for the treatments. My surgery was St. Patty's day (March 17). It's normally 2 weeks from surgery to radiation, which would have been March 31 (my birthday). With the 2 extra weeks, mine starts on Tax Day (April 15). These are really easy dates to remember. My first surgery was March 13, which was a Friday the 13th.

There is absolutely no regrowth of the lump that was removed. Something caused it to grow rapidly when it first appeared. Whatever caused that rapid growth seems to be gone. I've got some "lumpy" stuff in my neck and throat, but that is normal based on the surgery I had, and will eventually disappear.

I should expect to talk in a hoarse whisper through the entire remaining treatments. I'm supposed to start recovering my normal voice in June. There was nothing found on my vocal cords and nothing done surgically to them. The hoarseness is a result of the feeding tube and another tube that was in my throat during the surgery.

Good News From the Doc

The problem with my throat is healing on its own and will not require additional surgery. It's been a little over 2 weeks since the surgery to remove the lump in my neck. It only took six weeks for that to grow from nothing to the size of an egg. After two weeks there is no indication of any regrowth of the lump.

No regrowth of the lump means two good things. 1) That's an indication that the source of everything was removed, even though it was never confirmed that it was found. 2) The remaining radiation and chemo treatments are mainly a follow-up procedure to make sure that what was already done is all that ever needs to be done.

I got the first group of staples removed today. By my count it was about 20 of them.