I saw my surgeon this week. Actually, first I saw his stunning, if possibly anorexic, Pakistani intern. She had wonderful hands. Dr. H let her do the endoscopy, and it was far less uncomfortable with her doing the driving.
The endoscope is cool. It’s a pencil-thin flexible cable with a light and imaging camera on the open end. It plugs into a dedicated chunk of imaging hardware, which in turn runs to a hard drive for storage. Basically, it’s a microcamera in a compact, easy-to-use unit. While waiting for the docs, I started looking online to see where I could get one. Can you imagine the cool digital photos of ants in action, mites, centipedes, face-to-face with ringneck snakes? Too cool. But too expensive. Via eBay, I could put together a functional suite of hardware for about $5K.
I mention that “I want one of these” to Doctor H. He says he wants one also but the outfit in the examining room cost on the order of $15K. Then he says, “you know, I walked into CostCo last week and they had one for sale for $150. The camera cable is a little thicker, but it’s sturdy and easy to hook up. It’s made for automobile diagnosis and repair.” Holy Hell!! I didn’t make it to my local CostCo this weekend, but I will this week. Expect really nifty photos of soil mesofauna to start showing up over at docviper!
Anyway, where were we? Oh yeah—fantasizing about the slender, smooth-skinned doctor. In sequence she, then a young oriental graduate student, and finally Dr. H all palpate my throat, jaw and ears (!) and peer inside, manipulating things with wood sticks or holding my tongue rather painfully in the grip of a big gauze pad. Turns out my throat is STILL devastated by the radiation, too raw and inflamed to make an immediate PET scan productive (the inflammation will take up the radiotracer as eagerly as any remaining malignant tissues, mucking up the focus of the follow-on surgery).
I report that I am having a hell of a time trying to maintain my weight—my swallowing remains awkward, and it is difficult to get enough calories orally. And when I do get some calories by mouth, I feel so full that I can’t bring myself to top up with canned UN emergency rations via feeding tube. So I’m losing weight and getting weak. I was trying to keep myself at 200 pounds, but I went down to 189 last week and I’m now averaging about 195. Can you imagine someone my age, or me in particular with my lack of self control relative to food ingestion, having trouble keeping weight UP? Just another in a growing suite of ironies accompanying cancer! In the waiting room, several of the nurses who worked with me during treatment stopped by to say hello and offer advice. They have a weirdly schizophrenic relationship with Gatorade. Some of them recommend using it in place of water because it will provide calories along with simple hydration. Others advise eschewing it (nice word, no?) because of the high sugar content. I’m goin’ with the calories at the moment.
I also tell the docs about this weird cycle of pain of weakness I’ve fallen into. About every four days, I have two or three days where I’m incredibly weak, my joints and muscles hurt universally, and I can’t get any sleep. Then I pass out for a sequence of long, long sleeps and feel better. Then, a few days later, back into the meat grinder.
None of them have any idea. This cyclical thing is completely outside their collective experience and the lore of cancer treatment and recovery. They have nothing to offer by way of help.
But. At least my continued illness isn’t some kind of idiosyncratic malingering. Dr. H schedules my PET scan for the last week of August, to give the still manifest inflammation time to subside. At that time, he’ll schedule surgery, presumably in September, to remove the chicken-fried residue of my oral lymph nodes and any remaining malignant tissues. I can hardly wait.
There’s a new and interesting essay up at http://sustainablebiospheredotnet.blogspot.com/ . Well, at least I think it’s interesting. I’m writing a piece a week on the environmental consequences of armed conflict, hoping to have enough material to compile the first of several books and go to press before the spring semester. I have not updated http://docviper.livejournal.com/ or http://theresaturtleinmysoup.blogspot.com/ so if you’ve been over there recently, hang on until I update next week. Thanks for stopping by!
Oh. If anyone knows someone who knows Michael Douglas, go ahead and pass the weblog address along. Maybe he’ll get some humor out of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment