To be blood honest, I am terrified of this procedure. Not at all sure why. I’ve had three surgeries in my life: vasectomy, back, and gall bladder. All were via small, polite incisions. Although the bruising pattern from the first suggested that the trained-in-the-Soviet Union doc from some Central Asian “country” was in there to his waist with his hands stretched over his head wielding a ballpeen hammer and a set of sheet metal shears.
But still. I have every faith in young Doctor H. and his staff. I’m not afraid they’ll find more malignancy—I know that’s a real possibility and I’ll deal with it when the time comes. I think the main thing is the massive nature of the operation itself. If I understand correctly, he’s going to split me mid-lateral from chin to chest, rip the entire cylinder open, and poke around in there for a couple hours.
He’ll biopsy the two areas of residual radiation uptake, but the oncologist was not concerned about those. He’ll also look for other suspicious tissue and I’m at least hoping clean up some of the dead stuff that is cosmetically problematic.
No idea how this is gonna come out, except that by mid-day Tuesday I’m gonna be a veg. I’ll probably update this blog several times this week and let the others lie fallow, but I’ll keep you up to date when and where new material might be. Keep good wishes for me in your heads, my friends. And maybe an image of undergraduate anatomy lab of a throat with little pins with flags identifying organs and glands… .
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