The Silver Lining

During my bout with cancer my weight went from 305 to 220, where it tends to fluctuate between 215 and 220.

So I'm going through my closet and separating my pants out by size.  This means I have to try every pair on and decide if they go into the way too big pile, the a little bit large but they'll do pile, or the these fit pile.  I planned to have a too small pile, but I can't find anything to put in it.

I know things have changed when I found a pair of pants that I knew were too small for me, and they fit.  Not snugly, not suck-in-your-gut fit.  They just fit.  That's a silver lining.

PET/CT Scan Update

On Monday, May 4th, 2015 I had another PET/CT scan for multiple reasons.  One, my radiation therapy doctor wanted to see how I was doing, because if the cancer came back, now was the time to do something about it.  I got the results on May 11th, and with one tiny exception I'm free of cancer.  The exception is the salivary gland on the right side, which shows an abnormality.  The sawbones thinks this is due to being bombarded with more radiation in 7 weeks than most folks see in a lifetime, and so is not worried.  So neither am I.

I'm still recovering from the treatment.  My sense of taste is about 75% normal.  Beef, for instance, doesn't taste good to me.  Ice cream doesn't taste like much of anything, and I can't taste the hot fudge on a sundae at all.  I suffer from a lack of saliva (dry mouth), so bread or bread like products are inedible for me.  This includes crackers, cookies, cake, pie or anything remotely similar.  I couldn't choke down a saltine cracker to save my life, and pills are extremely difficult to swallow - although I've learned that taking pills with milk makes it easier.

I'm cold most of the time; it's hard to stay warm, even at 70 degrees.  I suffer a nagging backache and general muscle aches that occasionally make me reach for the pain meds.  And that's all the bad news.

The good news is that I can go out dancing with Main Lady, I can do housework and general housekeeping chores.  I have a circle of friends that are glad I'm on the sunny side of the lawn, and I'm able to use my experience to give other people a little encouragement.

And that's the latest.

Cancer Recovery: Week 17

This may be the end of it.  I had a PET/CT scan along with a flexible fiberoptic laryngoscopy (they shove a narrow tube up your honker to look at your throat) which concluded that:

• The tongue is clean.  No cancer on the tongue.
• The lymph node on the right side of my neck may be cancerous.
• There is a shadow of some kind on one lung, which the doctor says is nothing to worry about.

So it's off to get a biopsy of the lymph node, then wait around for two days for the results.  Today the results came in.

Negative.

So I am now officially cancer free.

Now all I have to do is wait for the deleterious effects of the radiation and chemotherapy to wear off, and I'll be back at my usual bar stool.

Thanks to all of you for helping me through this.  When I was at my worst, I'd re-read your comments and my spirits were lifted.  That helped.

Cancer Recovery: Week 16

Here's the latest health news for those of you bored enough to read it.

I had a Positron Emission Tomography - Computed Tomography (PET/CT) scan last week, and the results are in.  Back in June of 2013 cancerous lesions were discovered on the base of my tongue.  These cancerous lesions have vanished and the tongue is completely clean.  The lymph node on the right side of my neck is still questionable; it may or may not be full of cancer, so I'm having a biopsy done on the 21st at the uncivilized hour of 7:30 AM.  The biopsy involves the CT machine, needles and drugs that make getting dressed up in an angle robe, tying a bedpan to your head and riding around on a gurney playing an imaginary game of polo seem completely normal.  I suppose this is not the worst experience possible, but given a choice I think I'm a little old for polo.

If the lymph node is cancerous, then it's off to surgery to have the fiendish thing removed.  With a knife.  I'm told this operation is not a walk in the park, but compared to many of the other things the surgeon does, it's pretty simple.  I'll be in the hospital 2-3 days.

Then there's the lung.  The PET/CT scan revealed a dark shadow at the bottom of my left lung.  I'm told that this may be nothing at all, or it may be a train wreck with attendant haz-mat spill, or something in between.  No one can tell exactly what it is without use of a knife on yours truly, which I'm trying to avoid.  The future is very uncertain here, and there is a likelihood that whatever it is might just go away on its own.

The good news is that ever since I had my gastrostomy tube (g-tube, used for feeding nutrients directly into the stomach) removed, the chronic nausea has vanished.  Not being sick to my stomach all the time has made it easier to eat, so my weight has stabilized around 221, down from my original 305.  My doctor says he wants the weight to remain stable for four to six weeks, then I can redouble the efforts for weight loss again.

Another problem is that I can't sleep nights.  I stare at the ceiling, toss and turn, drop off for maybe an hour before I wake up again, usually at 3:00 AM.  Nice, huh?  So it's off to my primary care physician I go, where I'm given a prescription for Ativan and instructed to get a blood test on my way out.  You see, back in June I was also diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, probably brought on by obesity.  I got the news this morning that I no longer have type 2 diabetes (or any other type), most likely due to weight loss.  So I'm happy about that.

My last problem involves my gall bladder, which is malfunctioning.  The surgeon who discovered the problem wants to operate, but since I'm not feeling any ill effects from the busted gall bladder I nixed the surgery.  My radiologist agrees with this - if it ain't broke, don't fix it.  So the gall bladder can stay like it is and I'll be fine with that.

And that's it.

Cancer Recovery: Week 9

I haven’t been posting much lately because the effort of typing is prohibitive.   Instead of typing everything I now have a copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking.  It’s not perfect but it’s better than typing by hand.

My health and well-being vary from day to day.  Today is one of my better days but I don’t know anything about tomorrow.  I have an appointment in a couple of weeks to get my feeding tube removed.  My doctor tells me this will resolve most if not all of my nausea problems. 

Last Wednesday found me in the emergency room again.  I was rehydrated and generally treated poorly.  My electrolytes were all okay with the exception of potassium.  I now have potassium pills that I’m taking.  

Believe me when I say that the cure is worse than the disease.  I have it on good authority that it will take one year for me to recover completely.  I have a strong feeling that it’s going to be a long year.  So I’ll make use of the time as best I can and continue writing.

My thanks to all of you for your prayers and positive thoughts.

Cancer Recovery: Week 5

I spend my time eating through my feeding tube and trying to find something interesting on the idiot box.  Neither is much fun, but life took a turn for the worse last Monday.

I'm a lazy person by nature.  I'm suffering from exhaustion which exacerbates this condition, but that's neither here nor there.  A month or so ago I decided to see how much pain was being masked by my morphine, and so I skipped my morning pill.  By noon I had my answer - a lot of pain was being masked - and so took my morning Morphine pill and a shot of my emergency booster morphine liquid.  So far, so good.

Last week I repeated this experiment and discovered I no longer needed the morphine and so stopped taking it.  My logic is that if I'm not in pain, why take the meds - right?  So I stopped.

This was a mistake.  Big time.

The nausea got worse, then it got a lot worse.  I became light headed and my hands and feet felt numb (I'm told this is called neuropathy).  Then the vomiting started.  I called the emergency number I'd been provided with and spent two and a half hours playing telephone tag with non-medical personnel who individually assured me that someone would be calling me back.  I finally got the message and dropped into the ER, there to saddle them with my symptoms.  Thankfully I was able to get Main Lady to drive, as Mom does not do well driving at night and her head is full of dust bunnies.

So we get to the ER and taken to a room where I'm eventually given anti-nausea medications.  In the middle of all this I get asked the standard questions about what I've ingested and when, and I let it slip that it's been two days since I took the morphine.  Main Lady jumps on it, beating the ER doc by a mile.

"Jack, you're suffering opiate withdrawal.  You can't just go cold turkey on an opiate; you'll get sick." 

So that was that.  I saw Dr. Deathray the next day who set up a program to taper off, which is what I'm doing.  For her part, Main Lady is a licensed clinical psychologist who used to work for the State, and so has seen a lot of this type of thing.

There should be a warning about this stuff.




 

Cancer: Recovery Week 3

Monday night was devoted to nausea and vomiting. I flashed until I couldn't stand up, and let me tell you there is nothing worse than vomiting up the artificial food I have to eat via my feeding tube followed by dry heaves.

Tuesday my radiation oncologist (Dr. Rubin) stuck a fiber optic tube up my nose to look at my throat. This procedure is no fun, by the way. He followed this examination by trying to find the tumor in my neck that had started the whole business, and declared the tumor to be gone. 

Result: I am now cancer free.

Dr. Rubin has no idea why I'm still sick and unable to retain food. I explain that I'm depressed and need some sort of anti-depressant, which Dr. Rubin cheerfully prescribes. Everyone in the know says the pills will help, but I'm doubtful.

Wednesday my chemo therapy oncologist (Dr. Muler) ordered hydration and 2 grams of magnesium. Dr. Muler thinks the problem is with the tube feeding and blames the dietician, Marcia, for my problems.
Marcia changed me to a brand new artificial food and slowed the intake rate to practically nil. Marcia wondered if I might have picked up a nasty little bug from the hospital, which is very likely. My immune system is compromised.

Thursday I begin to feel a little better and spend the day eating from my feeding tube and watching The Sopranos on DVD. I'm depressed. I force myself to get cleaned up and think positive thoughts.

Friday, today, I'm fighting off depression with everything I've got.

The bottom line is that both doctors are good at their profession, yet neither one can tell me why I'm so sick.  I'm exhausted all the time, I'm almost always nauseated and I'm depressed.  I don't see that there is much of anything worth living for.

Still and all, I keep marching.  One foot in front of the other, one hour at a time.  I hope the scenery changes.

Cancer: Recovery Weeks 1 and 2

Now that the therapy has concluded with an appropriate fanfare (Puccini's Tosca belting out Saint James Infirmary) I can relax and recover.  Right?  Wrong.  Real wrong.  I've spent most of my days in the hospital hooked up to multiple bags holding various concoctions which are guaranteed to keep my electrolytes in balance.  We hope.

The real blessing is that the constant nausea is gone or is under control.  The stomach being a small part of the digestive system, the intestines are free to give me one form of hell or another, and I now know that my mother's favorite son can have constipation and diarrhea at the same time.

Right now I'm getting nutrition from a bag of slop hooked up to my feeding tube and being fed into me by a pump.  If not for the pump regulating the flow, I would truly be up against it.

I want to thank all of you for your kind words, prayers and patience.  This is a bad road I'm on and every single prayer helps.  Just this afternoon Main Lady stopped over with a small bowl of yellow squash soup, and wonder of wonders I could actually taste the soup.  I am overjoyed, literally.  Everything else tastes like sawdust, and because of my dry mouth condition most foods are off the menu - I need soup or something the consistency of soup, not too spicy because my throat has the same feeling you get right after a tonsillectomy.

The pain medications are making me paranoid and hallucinate.  Not badly, mind you, but hallucinations are what they are.

Well, thanks to all of you. 

Cancer: Last and Final Treatment

I had my final treatment today.  As of today, no more chemo therapy and no more radiation therapy.  I'm officially done.

Now the tough part starts.  All that collateral damage has to be repaired, and the urban renewal process is tough and takes time.  For instance, Monday night I landed in the ER with my electrolytes out of balance to the point of magnesium being critically low.  I was unable to move my arms and legs, I was hallucinating and generally incoherent.

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology and Divine intervention, I'm still alive and with us. 

Cancer: Week 7 Day 4

Today is my birthday and my final chemo therapy treatment.  Of better news is that I was given a pump to use with my feeding tube.

The deal is I have a feeding tube.  In theory I take a can of highly concentrated, high caloric liquid food and poor it down the tube and into my stomach.  The trouble is and likely has been, is that the stomach can't handle it.  Think: you go from a diet (diet?  you call that a diet?) diet of junk food and gin to something that any triathlete would call desirably, disgustingly healthy and you wouldn't know what to do either.  So the stomach threatens an abrupt return to sender until the mystery substance can be identified and dealt with.

Enter the pump.

The pump accepts a huge bag of this health slop on one end and dispenses said slop into the stomach one tiny teaspoon full per minute.  The stomach gets used to getting a nutritious substance in this fashion and doesn't act up.  Much.  So now the nausea is, we all pray and hope, a thing of the past.

Prayers answered, and we may all thank the Lord for this one.

Cancer: Week 7 Day 3

I woke up yesterday afternoon and discovered that I've lost my voice.  I cannot talk at all; only whisper.  I'm told this is an expected side effect of the radiation therapy.

The skin on my neck and throat is burned and the nausea continues.  I can't eat anything without becoming nauseous, and the medication for nausea is not all that helpful.  The only real cure is time. I'm supposed to consume 2000 calories per day; I'm doing good to eat 1100.  Yesterday I managed about 1800 or so, which took a Herculean effort on my part.

Cancer: Week 7, Day 1

Seven weeks of treatment.  My final radiological treatment is one week from Tuesday (tomorrow); my final chemo treatment is this Thursday.  Then I'm done with therapy and things will get worse for three weeks.

Nausea comes in waves.  I've never been so sick in my life. 

Cancer and Rock Bottom

Last night, Wednesday, I hit rock bottom.  My digestive tract was malfunctioning in ways I couldn't believe were possible.  Nausea came in waves, accentuated by a spike in my fever.  I was so miserable I wanted to die.  Why should I live through this?  I couldn't come up with a good reason, but the effort of assembling myself, my pistol and a conveniently private place where my remains would be guaranteed to be discovered by the authorities was just too much effort.  So here I am.

Cancer, Week 6

I'm still alive.  My dietician tells me I'm not eating enough, which is probably true, so this week is going to be food week.  The problem is that my mouth is so dry that anything resembling a bread product is automatically rejected.  My sense of taste is, for all intents and purposes, gone.  Everything tastes like low-grade sawdust.  My energy level is down, which isn't helping.

The team on the radiology side have got their act together and are handling their set of side effects very well, meaning my pain level is easily tolerable.  The chemo side has been a different matter up until I switched oncologists; I picked the one the nurses feared, respected and universally disliked.  I met him and consider him a good, regular type guy who happens to be a whole lot smarter than everyone else.  Question: how would you handle it if the people you were forced to work with were all retards?  Let me amend that question: how do you handle it?  Because we've all been there, right?

This morning things aren't too awful bad.  We'll see how the day shakes out.

One good thing is that I no longer need Lorazepam (Ativan) to get through my radiology treatment.  I'm happy with that.

Status Update

I'm too sick to write.  Most of the medical staff tell me I'm doing real good.  One reminded me they never said this would be easy.

Thank You

My sincere thanks to everyone who has prayed for me or who has left a comment.  You have no idea what a line or two of encouragement means, so I'll tell you: The lift is enormous.

Still Alive

To those who can't tell from the next post, I'm still alive.  I'm sick as a dog, but I'm alive and I am not giving up.  For one thing, there's all those anti-freedom moonbats out there who would celebrate my demise - and I'm not going to give them the satisfaction.

English As Our Official Language

What's the problem with making English the official language of the United States?  This comes up every few years and every time it does, the media is flooded by moonbats who rant, rave and screed about racial prejudice and other bad things.  You know what?  I no longer care.

Keep reading for my own somewhat profane rant.  Warning: politically incorrect.

My Condition

Don't get your hopes up; I'm still alive.  My treatment begins in the next 10 days, and will consist of both radiation therapy and chemo therapy.  The primary treatment is radiation, which will happen five time a week for seven weeks.  The chemo therapy, which uses Cisplatin, is used to kill whatever squamous cells the radiation therapy breaks loose and that try to take up residence in another part of my body.  Think of this as bayoneting the wounded.

At the terminus of my last meeting with my treatment team, my doctor told me in all seriousness that in terms of undesirable side effects, this particular regimen was the toughest they had to offer.  In his entire career he's only seen two men continue working at their regular job all the way through treatment.

I don't intend to set any records, but neither do I intend to wimp out.  I'm going to get through this and come out the other side just as grouchy and ill-tempered as ever.

Still on Hiatus...

Pick one letter out of the alphabet.  Hint: it's the one between B and D.  Okay, you in the back of the class, get your hooter out of that girlie mag and pay attention.

C.

That's the letter, and that's what I've got.