It Might Get Messy

My tumors are characteristic of heavy tobacco use. The docs are all shocked to learn that I’ve never smoked, chewed, or dipped. But that doesn’t mean I’ve been risk-free. Behavioral risk factors for oral cancers include consumption of beverage alcohol. I’ve also habitually used alcohol-based mouthwash more-than-daily for nearly 50 years. In fact, since I was in my mid-twenties I’ve had a tendency to get low-level gum infections which I fought by swishing mouthwash nearly continuously for days on end. I was doing that for the pain in my mouth right up to the point that the cancer was diagnosed. 


Oh. I’ve also chewed betel nuts [1]. Admittedly it was only for a week, when I worked with big game hunters on Guam 24 hours a day. They chewed to keep themselves wired and got a kick out of turning me on to chewing. Betel had recently been made illegal in the U.S. When I got to airport in Honolulu to head back to the east coast, I remembered I had a pocket full of slivered betel nuts and was chewing them pretty much full time. I had to ditch them in a wastebasket before I went through security.


I saw my surgeon earlier in the week. He took one look into my throat and said “ok, so, it’s still a mess in there. I won’t be able to see a thing for weeks. Make an appointment a month out.” It was still a productive visit. I’ve been trying to wean myself off pain killers and other drugs. He said he expects I still need pain killers. That was a relief. I’ve been feeling like such a weenie, thinking the pain should be gone and here I am still hurting. Dr. H says it’s a minimum 10 weeks, and usually more like 12, for the radiation impacts to cease. Apparently the residual radiation is still killing cells and playing general havoc with mucous membranes and other tissues. My lower lip is constantly sore and shedding skin. I imagine when it heals up I’ll be free of the residual radiation effects.


Made it out to the Eastern Shore thanks to Dan and Liz, and got to see Paul and Linda back visiting from Australia, Mike and Laura, and others in the circle. After 3 hours of basically sitting on my butt, I was exhausted and had to return home. Sigh.


The longer this stretches out, the more worried I am about ongoing quality-of-life. Not that I’m ungrateful to be alive at this point. There are at least a couple of ways I could have screwed this up so that I wouldn’t be here tonight to write this. But my swallowing apparatus is painfully crippled, and it’s possible that that’ll be permanent. With one of my largest salivary glands gone, my mouth alternates between being too dry and running with thick mucous. The docs claim the latter should go away with the radiation residue, but I’m not so sure.


But no sense in whining. Thanks for stopping by. I have not updated the other weblogs. I have good material for all of them, I just haven’t made it over to do it. I’ll come back here and leave a note when I get the others up-to-date. Thanks!!!


Notes


[1] Mel Greaves, in Cancer: The Evolutionary Legacy (Oxford University Press 2000) says chewing betel quid is associated with oral and throat cancers in India. I was chewing just the betel nuts, without additives such as cloves, tobacco, and weirder medicinal plant products. And oddly, I got the opposite effect from the locals, who claimed betel was a stimulant. I actually found it soothing and sedative. Of course, we were working pretty much 24 hours a day for a couple of weeks, so sleep and general collapse into sloth were natural trajectories for my physiology.