Checking In

I wish there were some way readers could tell if I'm not posting because I'm in the hospital or if it's because there's not much to report. This time it's the latter. Not much is really happening.

Last time I saw the doc that did the feeding tube, I was supposed to schedule a colonoscopy. Just routine, no reason for alarm. I forgot. Dang! How could I forget to schedule that?

The swelling in my neck is slowly, slowly going down. I've actually had a "real" voice a few days in the last couple of weeks. I could more or less shout a few times. The voice I'm getting now isn't anything you'd recognize as my voice, but it's a voice, so that's good. Today it went away and all I've got is the half-duck and half-frog sort of hoarse croaking that I've had since the radiation hit.

I've been set up with a speech therapist to work with my swallowing problem. The swallow tests up to this point didn't give her a good definition of the cause of the problem, so I need another. I'm kind of stalling on getting that one scheduled. I figure that if I wait longer, there's a chance that my healing and less swelling could let me pass the test. The doc who did the surgery agrees and thinks I might pass the next test.

Speaking of the doc who did the surgery, I see him once a month. He's examining me for any signs of cancer showing up in my neck or throat. I saw him earlier this week and he can't find anything abnormal. It's his attitude that if I can get through one year after the surgery, that's confirmation that the original cancer is gone. Then I go into monitoring for any new outbreaks. That puts me pretty much back into the normal population for danger from cancer. I'm a little more at risk because I've had it, which is proof that I'm not genetically shielded from cancer risks.

I get a CAT scan next week to take a deeper look. That is routine. In fact, it's routine at 6 months. My oncologist delayed it because he was confident there was no need for it then.

I'm building up some stamina, but that's coming slowly. I still need ridiculous amounts of sleep. Fairly intensive chemotherapy and radiation takes a bigger toll than I had expected.

I've found out that some people with my type of cancer are physically unable to finish the chemo and radiation treatments. If I had known that was an option, I wonder if I would have finished. The last 3 weeks were just brutal. The only attitude I really had during that time was just to survive and see what happened after that.

There are no statistics anybody can find (or would admit they could find) that track mortality if radiation and chemo is either refused or stopped before the recommended series is finished. There has to be something that it's based on, so I guess I did what's best long term. It's nasty short-term - and short-term is about a year.