It Might Get Messy

Young Dr. N asked if I wanted him to “spray” me, but which he meant spritz my nasal passages with nominal anesthetic. I told him to skip it. As Dr. H told me long ago, “I offer the anesthetic because it makes me feel better, but it really doesn’t help”. One thing about cancer—it forces you to face the truth in many things, small and large. 

This was the Monday after Thanksgiving. I reported no systemic or insistent pain, although I did tell him that my throat hurt like hell after a weekend of partying and felt like someone had rubbed it down with coarse-grit sandpaper.

Dr. N slipped the video cable through my sinuses and into my throat. He said “Ooh, it’s a mess in there. Lotta blood. Swelling. Icky.” I’m sure he meant the latter in the most technical possible way. He seemed concerned, and I remembered the docs all being worried last time I showed up with bloody swelling in my throat. But when I inquired, he said it wasn’t anything to be concerned about. It’s just the aftermath of radiation. 

In other words, I’m still enduring the anatomical devastation wrought by radiation administered almost two years ago. What the frickin’ hell?! Well, I gather now that the alteration of my throat mucosal membranes from tough enough to eat the weirdest comestibles on offer in Asia and the Middle East to wimpy, cottony, painful marshmallowy tissue may be more permanent than not. 

Yum. At the moment, if I manage to eat a few hundred calories of solid food twice a day, I’m doing good. Mostly I eat a microwaved sausage or chicken biscuit for lunch, and sometimes a bit of pasta or potatoes for dinner. I need to slurp liquid with every bite to get the food bolus into condition to make it down my throat. Which is odd, because my epiglottis is nonfunctional. Far as I can tell, stuff ought to slide on in and about half the time make it properly down my gastrointestinal tract via my esophagus and half the time screw up and choke me by clogging up my breathing passages. Somehow, by some physiological magicianship, my throat doesn’t let this happen. Mostly food gets into my GIT and air gets into my trachea. I get a screw-up now and then, and if I tilt my head wrong when I ingest liquid I can pretty much drown, and some foods (rice, in almost any form, for example) have a greater tendency to gunk up my breathing apparatus. But mostly, for an anatomical wasteland, the complexities of my throat seem to operate pretty well.

Not necessarily so for my tongue and voicebox. My speech is still sloppy. Talking too much tires my vocal apparatus and makes my mouth ache and my voice slurred. When I speak slowly and precisely, I can make myself understood, but I sound brain damaged, at least to me. I’m from New Jersey. I’m used to talking full speed and assuming the listener will catch up or fall behind and either way it’s not my problem.

Except it is now. I have to get my speech back to a professionally competent level. But you know what? It’s actually improving, and rather more rapidly now. I started investing more seriously in trying to learn spoken Arabic (I need to learn to read and write as well, but for the moment speaking is the relevant skill). I started with some Egyptian Arabic CDs, switched to Eastern Arabic (which is quite different, in fact) and my speaking has been getting clearer and clearer. Arabic is rich in glottal stops, rolled Rs, and wide breathy phonemes, all of which are difficult for my post-radiation vocal apparatus to deal with. Half an hour each way with the progressive CDs on my daily commute, and not only am I getting some rudimentary Arabic, my English is getting much, much clearer. 

So I gotta stop complaining so much and just keep working. Ma Salaama, my friends. Check professional blog over at http://www.aehsfoundation.org/ . Also, I’m supposed to do some traveling this week, I’ll try to get some photos and travelogue up at docviper next week. Enjoy the start to the holidays, all. I’m almost through Matthew already, ready to start Mark. I should be at Revelation ahead of schedule, ready to watch the Pope mumble through mass on Christmas Eve. Love to all!