And On to Surgery #3

Thursday, May 14, with a noon check-in time. When they called today, they wanted me to confirm that I was scheduled in to "close a fistula". I should have looked the word up before I agreed to it. A fistula is an opening between two areas that aren't normally connected.

That was 3 weeks ago! 4 or 5 weeks ago my oncologist refused to continue until my surgeon saw me again. The oncologist said he would get in touch with my surgeon and they'd work out an appointment. That did not happen. Instead I ended up with an appointment with the doctor who's going to give me the radiation. He refused to schedule anything, called my surgeon during my appointment, and my surgeon saw me the same afternoon. His scheduler couldn't get me set up for surfery for about 2 weeks.

It was me and not the doctors who found and reported the fistula (or fistulae - I suspect there were two). I was expecting surgery to correct the first one. I measured the progress of that one with how many teaspoons of food ended up in my bandages after I ate a meal.

The latest one was just from drinking water. The leakage was from a higher spot in my throat and it leaked out of a different area of the incisions. That one cleared up 2 or 3 weeks ago, but since I reported it to an oncologist, who called the surgeon, now the surgeon wants to go fix something that isn't broken any more.

The part that's broken now is the incision. The last week or so has been a race between the incision pulling apart and the incision healing. For a couple of days it was pulling apart faster than it was healing. I'm wearing a pretty good-sized bandage when I go out of the house. It's not to protect my neck as much as it is to protect other people's eyes.

I've still got a lot of swelling in my neck. I think the swelling is getting bigger and pulling on the skin. Then the skin gives way at the incision. The swelling is the source of my hoarseness, which is getting worse instead of better.