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Health update for those concerned.
My cancer is gone. Not in remission. Not under control. It's gone. I've got a surgeon and an oncologist watching me to see if I get cancer again. I'm at a higher risk than the general population for that, so I get CAT scans every 4 months.
I have some permanent effects. Swallowing is difficult. A vitamin pill is the largest thing I can swallow. Some pills that size get stuck. I just finished my breakfast of yogurt. This is odd - I can make my way through a pork chop, but can't eat a steak.
I lost 1 saliva gland in the surgery and 4 more from radiation. That leaves 1, so I have a permanent dry mouth and I get a sore throat from getting dehydrated. Another odd thing - I don't get thirsty. I know to drink when my throat gets sore. I lost thyroid and parathyroid on the right side of my neck in surgery. Radiation killed those on the left, so I'm permanently on thyroid meds.
One vocal cord is mostly paralyzed. The nerve to its muscle was removed. I can't yell or talk very loud. My voice sounds like something happened to me, but it's not bad - unless I get dehydrated or my throat gets dry. Then I'm pretty hoarse and can lose my voice completely.
I'm mostly numb from about an inch behind my right ear to the middle of my throat down to about 3 inches below my right collarbone and then out to the shoulder. I got shingles in that area and the nerves awoke with a vengeance. That gave me some good old-fashioned pain up to level 9. (Level 10 is where the nerves give up and stop sending pain singles because they've been sending the maximum they can send for so long they just quit - been there, done that - during radiation of my throat).
I caught the shingles early and had them gone within a week. Then I got post-herpetic neuralgia. In English - that's the pain from shingles sticks around after the shingles are gone. I'm just at the point where I can manage the pain well enough to work and the meds allow me to work. If I get any worse, I'll have to consider disability. If it gets any worse, then either the pain is too much to work productively or the meds are too much to work productively.
I've designed and am developing a computer program that checks data integrity when data is moved by a process or manipulated by a controlled process. If you use a computer to do your taxes, the people who wrote the program could use my program to see if their program got the tax tables from the government stuck into their program accurately. Somebody is doing that by eyeball right now. My program automates the process and doesn't get eye-strain if it has to check thousands or even millions of records. I kind of need to be alert and focused at work, so some pain meds are out of the question.
It's been one heck of a journey. The pain in the area of the surgery can get pretty bad. My wife seriously wonders if she made the right call when I ran into a rough streak and the docs asked her if they should save me or just let me go. She told them to save me, but doesn't enjoy seeing me in the pain I'm in and doesn't like what that's doing to me right now.
My cancer is gone. Not in remission. Not under control. It's gone. I've got a surgeon and an oncologist watching me to see if I get cancer again. I'm at a higher risk than the general population for that, so I get CAT scans every 4 months.
I have some permanent effects. Swallowing is difficult. A vitamin pill is the largest thing I can swallow. Some pills that size get stuck. I just finished my breakfast of yogurt. This is odd - I can make my way through a pork chop, but can't eat a steak.
I lost 1 saliva gland in the surgery and 4 more from radiation. That leaves 1, so I have a permanent dry mouth and I get a sore throat from getting dehydrated. Another odd thing - I don't get thirsty. I know to drink when my throat gets sore. I lost thyroid and parathyroid on the right side of my neck in surgery. Radiation killed those on the left, so I'm permanently on thyroid meds.
One vocal cord is mostly paralyzed. The nerve to its muscle was removed. I can't yell or talk very loud. My voice sounds like something happened to me, but it's not bad - unless I get dehydrated or my throat gets dry. Then I'm pretty hoarse and can lose my voice completely.
I'm mostly numb from about an inch behind my right ear to the middle of my throat down to about 3 inches below my right collarbone and then out to the shoulder. I got shingles in that area and the nerves awoke with a vengeance. That gave me some good old-fashioned pain up to level 9. (Level 10 is where the nerves give up and stop sending pain singles because they've been sending the maximum they can send for so long they just quit - been there, done that - during radiation of my throat).
I caught the shingles early and had them gone within a week. Then I got post-herpetic neuralgia. In English - that's the pain from shingles sticks around after the shingles are gone. I'm just at the point where I can manage the pain well enough to work and the meds allow me to work. If I get any worse, I'll have to consider disability. If it gets any worse, then either the pain is too much to work productively or the meds are too much to work productively.
I've designed and am developing a computer program that checks data integrity when data is moved by a process or manipulated by a controlled process. If you use a computer to do your taxes, the people who wrote the program could use my program to see if their program got the tax tables from the government stuck into their program accurately. Somebody is doing that by eyeball right now. My program automates the process and doesn't get eye-strain if it has to check thousands or even millions of records. I kind of need to be alert and focused at work, so some pain meds are out of the question.
It's been one heck of a journey. The pain in the area of the surgery can get pretty bad. My wife seriously wonders if she made the right call when I ran into a rough streak and the docs asked her if they should save me or just let me go. She told them to save me, but doesn't enjoy seeing me in the pain I'm in and doesn't like what that's doing to me right now.
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