It Might Get Messy

I’ve always measured my years from the autumn. I think it comes from school, of course, which was until way past conventional “school” age (and remains to this day) a huge part of my life. The awkwardness and excitement of September has kept up with me, although more recently the holidays, kicking off with preparations for Thanksgiving, have taken a lead position.


Anyway, if change is gonna come to my life, autumn is when I’m primed to deal with it. My cancer, which was diagnosed at the close of the holidays last year, bridged autumn and winter, and I managed to keep up with it. But it’s autumn now, and time for things to sort themselves out.


My swallowing still sucks, and every evening thick ropes of mucous form in my throat. But over Thanksgiving I got hooked on the turkey gravy. Managed to chug quite a bit of it over a couple of days. Well, a couple of half cups, at least. More oral “food” than I’ve managed over the past weeks.


And this seems to have triggered something inside. I actually woke up hungry the other day. Pounded down a big glass of Instant Breakfast (made with whole milk to maximize calories, of course). I’ve been hungry at some point every day since. Can’t do much more than thick liquid (tonight I had some egg drop soup from the Chinese take out place), but on the other hand, at least I’m doing thick liquid!


Also, my chest drain pulled out last night. Two photos following show it. The white plate with the holes in it was inside my chest. To travel to Boston a couple weeks ago, I had to cut off the balloon collector from the end of the train and tie off the drain (traveling was hard enough without having to empty a balloon full of liquid every few hours). Apparently, the drain was superfluous, and let itself be yanked out as I tossed in my sleep last night. We’ll find out on Wednesday when I see Dr. H (for a drain removal!).

Finally, following is a photo of the wonderful linocut print Janice M. made to honor her  brother’s conquering his throat cancer, this is the proof she sent me. It’s the apparatus needed to get him his meds when his throat closed up shop from the radiation. Looks a lot like the apparatus I used for the same purpose! I hope she doesn’t mind my posting it here (Janice, just let me know, I can pull the photo if you want). 

Anyway, Thanksgiving was fabulous as usual, albeit exhausting. Thanksgiving photos and a bit of text up at http://docviper.livejournal.com/ so be sure to check in!