Oh, CRAP!

Now I have 4 doctors, as a Radiation Oncologist has been added to the mix. At my first meeting with him, I got to see the pathology reports of what actually happened during the surgery on my neck. That type of information should be read on an empty stomach. It doesn't seem like they could have removed that much and actually left anything.

The radiation treatments are bad. The doctor and PA (Physician's Assistant) were professional, but this will give you the general idea of how the meeting went.

Me: I've heard I might need a feeding tube. What's your experience?
PA: You will love your feeding tube.
Me: Uh, I've had a feeding tube and I hated it.
PA: The radiation is going to give you the equivalent of a severe sunburn - inside your throat.
Me: I had 12 biopsies taken out of my throat. I'm familiar with the mother of all sore throats.
PA: That's not much compared to what you're going to get. If your throat gets so sore you can't swallow water, the feeding tube is our only way to keep you alive.

Well, I'm glad I didn't donate that month's worth of feeding tube formula I have left over from the last time. The damage from the radiation is cumulative and gets worse as the treatments progress.

Ny oncologist says I should have 5 weeks of treatments. The radiologist thinks 7 weeks is the right time frame. I will get radiation every day and chemo on Fridays.

The PA says that one to three weeks after the treatments are over is when I will start recovering from the treatments and getting back to "normal". I have to put "normal" in quotes because I have no idea what "normal" is going to be by then.

Me: Am I going to be able to work during any of this?
Doc: You will be able to work as much as and as long as you can tolerate, but by about the fourth week, the only thing you're going to want to do is to plot my death. You're not going to like me.
Me: When I got my feeding tube put in, I was hoping the doctor who did it had a dog, so that I could wish his dog died and he found it dead in his driveway when he got home from work.
Doc: Compared to me, he's going to be your life-long buddy.

I'm planning on missing about 6 weeks of work in June and July. The first week of August is my target date for discovering what "normal" means. That's about when I should be able to start doing something other than surviving.

When the radiologist examined my neck and throat, he had some concerns about the healing. Me too. If I put enough water in my mouth that it takes 3 or 4 swallows to drink it all, it will leak out of one point in my incision. That got the radiologist on the phone with the surgeon, and the surgeon saw me the same afternoon.

The surgeon thought a minor surgery to assist in healing the incision was the way to go. He had me set that up with his surgery scheduler. May 14 was the available date. By May 14, the incision will be healed. I expect the corrective surgery will be canceled and then I'll start the process of scheduling the radiation again.

The first expectation (back in early March) was that the radiation would start 2 weeks after the surgery. It's looking like 2 months is going to be the interval between surgery and radiation.