It Might Get Messy

I was pretty sick the last time Nurse C took care of me. That would have been a year-and-a-half-ago, when I was admitted via the emergency room, required a couple units of blood, and was generally as close to physiological collapse as I ever expect to be. At least until I DO physiologically collapse.

Nurse C, sole post-surgery attendant hanging around the recovery rooms on Friday, remembered our past meeting. She says I look “good”. Which I know, now that I am a 60-year old cancer survivor, is a comparative thing. I do not look “good” on any rational objective basis. And a comparative thing that can only be taken so far down the metaphorical path. I’m sure I look “good” now compared to the skeletal 187 pounds of painfully bruised and dehydrated prosciutto I was the last time I chatted with Nurse C. Otherwise, I look like an unattractive 60-year old cancer survivor. 

Be that as it may. My purpose in being in the operating room on Friday was to be biopsied following a nasty bleeding incident and discovery of strip of torn tissue in the back of my throat. The intervening couple of weeks had not been particularly uncomfortable. My throat wasn’t clear, but it wasn’t clogged, either. Let’s call it “perturbed”.

Still, Dr. H is solicitous of my throat. He worries about it. Which is good. I can worry about it, but having no real understanding of the shifting tides of cancerous tissues, my worry is that of an amateur. Dr. H is a professional. He knows what to worry about and why.

He says my throat tissue remains fragile. That irritating foods are plausible causes of bleeding wounds. This continues to shock me. I can’t believe we’ve more or less permanently rendered my oral mucosae so sensitive that I can’t eat without painful discomfort. But that seems to be where we are. 

So here’s a photo of my generally irritated throat. There’s apparently nothing characteristically carcinogenic about this line of scabby tissue. The fact that it has appeared is enough to render it suspicious. 

So Dr. H had the anesthesiologist put me under and slipped the knives in to excise some of the scab. Here you can see the scalpel and the rectangle of flesh ready to be pulled out and dropped into the vial.

And the post-surgery tissue, ready to recover. 

Dr. H figures to get biopsy results back middle of this coming week. In the meantime, he does not seem all that impressed with the inflamed spot of interest in this round. He thinks it has a fair chance of being malignant, but that it is compact and could be treated rapidly, easily, and surgically.

Which is good. Not sure I’m ready to go through another course of radiation and chemotherapy, at least not the intensive twice-a-day treatments I got in the first round. Conversely, I’m hoping to be left with enough functional mucous membrane in my oral cavity to be able to talk, eat, and breathe. Maybe not comfortably, but functionally. 

Hopefully I’m there. We’ll find out later this week. If this tissue isn’t malignant, I’m going to take that as a very good sign. And if it is, I’ll take Dr. H’s confidence in its compact treatment as a good sign. Either way, let’s say it looks like I’m getting closer to closing out my cancer. 

Then back to dealing with real life. I wonder if I’ll miss the distraction?