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The last few days has been pretty varied in terms of the pain and how I feel overall.

I promise I won't turn this blog into a "whine-fest" but I'd like to keep a running record of how it feels to recover from this surgery. Who knows, someone searching for information on the Internet may be interested to know what it's like. I never found this information and wasn't told what it would be like. Had I known, I might have asked different questions.

Yesterday, for instance, was a pretty good day. I slept in. When I awoke at 11 or so, I was in pretty good shape; meaning that I didn't have my usual set of aches and pains that cause me to move like a seventy-year-old man in the morning. Relief at last!

After showering, I decided to go for a walk. From here to Hwy 43 is about 3/4 of a mile, I estimate, over somewhat rough asphalt and with some slight inclines. I walked the whole distance there and back at a fair clip and wasn't really tired when I returned. That's a first. It usually wears me out. A sign, I suppose, that I'm beginning to get some stamina back.

But all things are short term in this recovery, I'm discovering. Today was entirely different. I didn't sleep well and when I finally awoke I was exhausted, achey, and in pain. Pretty much the entire day has been like this. I think the key is sleep. When I get a good night's sleep, I don't awake in pain and my day goes well. When I don't sleep well, the next day is miserable and I end up napping frequently.

Therefore, professor, I need to get as much good sleep at night as possible. It's simply more healing.

So, enough. This surgery is becoming a pain in the neck.

☆

I'm doing my best to be in touch but I'm having some difficulties. They're not insurmountable but they make it hard to reach out.

The recovery process is much more labor intensive than I thought. My body must be burning calories like crazy. Thank God I'm consuming them like crazy, too.

You may know that my cell phones are not working. I'm trying to rectify that with my Net 10 phone. My MetroPCS phone only works in DFW and I'm not there, so there you have it.

Then, there is no phone in the carriage house, where I'm currently ensconced. It's in the main house. So, generally, I'm out of earshot of the ringer.

If you've called and left a message, please know that I am aware that you called and will get in touch soon. I'm not ignoring you; I just have some challenges in staying in touch for the moment.

And, finally, a bit of good news: I'm probably headed home next weekend. I'm improving to the point my sister wants my sorry butt outta her carriage house. And, really, it's time. So, come next weekend, I'll be "home" in G.P.

We'll talk more soon.

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If you were at the benefit milonga on Sunday night, Oct. 21st, I want to personally thank you for being there. What a wonderful evening!

Just to update you, very briefly: I'm now 12 days post-op and doing better daily. The chronic pain is diminishing, the sudden nerve pain is severe but manageable, and I'm weaning myself off the heavy drugs.

I did a video tonight and I'm going to try to make this work for readers who might be interested in seeing me get better.

I'll post a small version and a larger version for people with varying bandwidth.

Small


Large

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This is my least favorite state of being: drugged and "stoopid."

But I'm trying to do a better job of listening to my body tell me what I should be doing to heal it. . . and, right now, I'm surrendering to the calmative powers of "good drugs." They calm the pain enough to give my body the time it needs to heal, to create new connections, and to smooth over the roughness of the surgery.

I can manage a conversation right now, though, scintillating is not an adjective I would use to describe it. I've simply put it in a very low gear and I'm moving through the area at a very slow pace. Granma on her walker would beat me in a race right now.

So, then, this is where I am and where I need to be right now. Changes occur on a daily basis and I could be backing off the drugs at any moment. That would be my choice. It seems, though, that I'm not the one making the choices. My body is taking the lead in dictating what I'm doing.

This surgery/recovery/convalescence thing is harder than it looks. But it's doable. The next step is to do it under the influence of fewer drugs.

More soon. . . as I burn off the fog.

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As time wends its way toward Thursday next, I have many things I need or want to get done before going in the hospital — laundry, packing for a 2–3 week stay away from "home," and making good on some promises to get things done.

One of the things I want to do before my surgery is to thank publicly all the people who have called or emailed with their support and prayers for a swift recovery. There are so many — a couple hundred — that I have little hope of responding to each, individually.

Please know that I am so very grateful to you for sending your prayers and your encouragement to me over the past three months. It has meant more to me than I have the ability to express. At times, I've been brought to tears over the smallest of sentiments expressing hope for my well-being.

I am truly blessed to have so many people in my life who love me and care about me. All I can say to you is a simple, humble "Thank you." 

☆

You may be aware that a couple months ago I had found what I thought was the perfect location to convalesce after surgery. It was a beautiful little cottage on Lake Tawakoni in East Texas, quiet, peaceful, and secluded. I wrote extensively about the cottage in a previous blog entry and thought the odds good that the owners — Glenda and Glen, I called them — would see their way clear to renting it to me for the next six months to a year following my treatment (which was still undecided upon when I wrote about it).

Evidently, it was not to be. The cottage owners decided it was better to rent it only on the weekends than to have a single tenant for up to a year. Go figure.

It's their right to do so, obviously, so i can't complain too much. But, now, I'm back to looking for a place to stay after my immediate recovery from surgery, someplace quiet, peaceful, and secluded, that will facilitate my continuing the writing of this blog, eventually turning it into a book.

If you know of such a place — the specifics of which are wide open — please contact me with details so I can follow up with a phone call or email when I'm able to speak again following surgery.

☆

Thursday is the day I have to be at Parkland for surgery. . . at 5:30am, no less. So far, in the past 24 hours, two friends who had each agreed to put me up the night before and drive me to the hospital have had a change of plans and I've had to scramble at the last minute to find transportation. But I do have it covered. I think. Those things happen, I suppose.

I'm not about to go whining about how everything is screwed up. . . because it's not. Considering all the logistics involved, things are going pretty smoothly. And that's a real blessing.

One more day before I am incommunicado for a bit. Thanks again for all of your support and prayers.

Stay tuned. There's a lot more to come.

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I actually thought I would be through with the Pre-Op activities by now. My 9:30am appointment turned into a 6 hour stay and a 40 minute consultation with a 4th year resident named Peter Sabitini. That was enough to get me bumped at the Day Surgery where I would have had blood work done, an EKG, and other fun stuff that every patient so looks forward to.

So, the more mundane activities will take place tomorrow. Early. I anticipate rising at 6am. (Stop laughing! It's not funny. It's hard being a night owl and rising pre-dawn.) My appointment is at 8am. (Again. Stop with the laughing.) The earlier, the better, the nurse said. Good. Maybe there will actually be some daylight left when I leave.

I did find out about the surgery from Dr. Sabitini. All the ins and outs and gooey bits. First, the tonsillectomy. We're talking one tonsil. Plus, possibly, some soft palate. I can look forward to many a fun lunch spraying Dr Pepper from my nose when I take a sip. That's appropriate, I think. Lunch partners will have a laugh riot over this. But a few dirty looks and a cleaning bill or two is a small price to pay to get rid of this nasty bugger in my throat.

Second, the neck removal. Turns out, they're not cutting off my head at all. Nope, they're just removing my entire neck and placing my head directly on my shoulders. Now, being short never bothered me before, but this should be an even greater advantage when I'm dancing Tango. My Tango friends will know that this is because I frequently dance with much taller women. You do the math.

Looks like the 2 to 4 days I estimated for a hospital stay will be a little longer — 5 to 6 days, instead. The tradeoff is that it seems that I'll only have a drain in my neck for the duration of my hospital stay, not for the entire two weeks or so of my recovery. This is good news because I had planned on a dinner date about a week post-op. I'm not sure who my dinner partner was going to be. . . but that's another story. I just know, intuitively, that having a drainage tube protruding from one's neck is somewhat distracting and could lead to some awkward silences during dinner conversation.

☆

The next week, leading up to the surgery on the 11th will be a bit hectic. It's almost like going on vacation for 3 to 4 weeks. I've got to remember to put the cat out, turn the dog off, stop the newspaper (though, recent media trends show that they're doing a lovely job of that all by themselves), and set the thermostat to 85. So much to do. So little time.

As I get closer, I'm going to add a new page to the blog. It'll be one that you can contribute to simply by emailing your blog entry to a "special" email address. oooooooohh!! "Special." That way, friends and enemies alike, will be able to drop in and leave comments for me and everyone else who reads A Lump in My Throat while I'm in the hospital.

I may have trouble speaking for a while; however, I do plan to update the blog, though I may be somewhat more sedate than usual. You'll see through that, I'm sure, and add your own laughs between the lines. Who knows? It could be the start of a whole, new interactive artform. We could be onto something here.

Alright, enough babbling. I've got work to do and you probably have a real job.

Get back to work.

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One of the difficulties I face in uncovering information about this cancer — tonsillar squamous cell carcinoma — is finding good quality information from good quality sources.

I spoke this morning with a rep from a company that sells a product that is used to reduce hemorrhaging and recovery time in tonsillar surgery. The product and the technique are called Coblation^® and there's a good deal of use of the technique, especially with children.

After seeing various videos of the technique, I found a video on the company's site that showed a cancerous tonsil being removed by Coblation. I was quite impressed. In the right hands, it seems like a much improved tool to use in throat surgery over a "cold knife." Less bleeding. Quicker recovery.

Not having seen another technique, electrocautery, being demonstrated, however, I can't make a comparison there.

A patient with a little information, I've found, is not the most welcome of entities in a hospital. Surgeons are such sensitive souls; they like to think they have all the answers to life's medical mysteries. Suggesting — even inquiring about — surgical techniques does not meet with lots of head bobbing and high fives from the docs.

Noooooooooo. Not by a long shot. Rather, the older ones don't even want to acknowledge that the patient has done anything proactively to research information about their disease or its treatment. Particularly if it's new technology or an alterntative approach to treatment. It's the N.I.H. Attitude. That's not National Institutes of Health. Uh-uh. I'm talking about the Not Invented Here Attitude. If it isn't conceived, discovered, or invented by the conventional Western medical establishment, then it's not worth even acknowledging, much less discussing.

The younger docs, the residents, have varying degrees of openness to the subject; the more senior, the less so. It's evidently beaten out of them with a surgical hammer and a couple of strategically placed hemostats.

So, although my discussion with the Coblation rep was interesting — even reassuring in some respects — in the end, it was just idle conversation that will get nothing done.

Nonetheless, I know that my surgery, whatever technique is used to remove this cancer, will be a success. I already see it in my mind's eye as if it were a fait accompli. My white knights are destroying the black, mal-formed cancer cells in my neck. And that's the best technique I could use in my fight with this disease.

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Time seems to speed up and slow down, simultaneously. The future rushes headlong toward the present and the present crawls out of bed each morning and leaves a slug-like trail across the day as today becomes tomorrow.

Such seems my sense of time as I do battle with cancer, getting little done on a daily basis because the "machine" works so slowly. But the cancer grows each day in my tonsil and my neck, never pausing, never stopping, constantly dividing and multiplying while working on its one genetically determined task — consuming its host.

My "Little Buddy" — the tumor in my neck — is on a mission to destroy me and time is not on my side. Time is relentless. Time moves forward like a shark, any pause endangering it because whatever defense I choose is strengthened by having just a minute longer in which to prepare.

But I am dauntless. I cannot be dissuaded. I am determined to beat Time in the race for my own body. I see the finish line up ahead. I am in the lead. And to the victor go the spoils of battle. Time is running out for this "squame" as I sic the docs of war on this tumor and let them do their work on my "Little Buddy."