checking in - what have I learned?

I seem to have less of a sense of urgency about writing these posts these days. I do not know what that means...I wonder...should I formally have an ending to this blog? Should I just fade out with fewer and fewer posts? Should I work at keeping it going? The dramatic gains I made in the early months post treatment are gone, and now the gains seem slooooow and very gradual. I pray there are more gains to come, particularly in the area of salivary function. I pray the good news from the last scan will remain good news and that eventually I can really close the door on this episode in my life.

Here is one post I need yet to write..."What have I learned?" If I formally end this blog, perhaps that needs to be the title of my final post. I really need to put some thought into that. I suppose an even more meaningful post might be "How have I changed?"

Regarding my week or two since the last post, it has been generally good. There are still days my energy seems to forget to get out of bed with me, and there are days when eating is more of a chore, but there are also days when I feel more energetic and days I actually enjoy food again. It is always a treat to discover I can add a new food to the list of foods I can eat. Sometimes, it's up and down. For example, my tongue often gets invisible little cuts from the dryness or from getting scraped by some dry food in the process of chewing or swallowing...then I eat an orange and my eyes water with the pain of the acidic fruit on the cuts. But, I have also eaten oranges and enjoyed a burst of juicy sweetness, and not had that burning sensation on my tongue. It seems I am recovering taste on the left side of my mouth more quickly than the right, and I can tell that if I am going to taste anything sweet, it will come from the back of my tongue on the left...I have no idea where our taste buds are located, but that has been my experience. In the past, I just ate an orange and it seemed to taste sweet everywhere I chewed it. Now, I have to remember...back, left. I ate a marshmallow peep the other night...a past weakness of mine...I had to wash each small bite down with milk. The first bite was quite sweet...but by the last bite of it, the sweetness was gone. Weird.

If anyone has thoughts or suggestions about what to do with this blog, I'd be open to considering them. I know when I was going through what looking back seems to be a very bad nightmare lasting several months (which seemed like several years), this blog was always on my mind and often reading the encouragement from your comments is what kept me going. I started writing without the expectation of having anyone actually read what I wrote, and have always been amazed that there were people who regularly followed this beyond a few family members. I hope I have been able to convey how much that has meant to me. And thinking back, it seemed there were times I felt compelled to write about some aspect of my spiritual life, and other times I felt a need to share something I felt through the words of a poem I had read. More recently, it seems I am just writing "here's how I'm doing" kinds of entries, and I find it not very interesting to write about (or read) another post like..."guess what? I ate an apple today!"

So...my initial thought is that if my next doctor's visit/exam in late April yields good news, that I bring this blog to a formal end. Between now and then, I work on posting a few final thoughts, some of which I alluded to above. Then, we keep in touch through other venues... What do you think?

checking in - Good news for a Tuesday afternoon!!!

Tuesday afternoon,
I'm just beginning to see, now I'm on my way
It doesn't matter to me, chasing the clouds away.
The Moody Blues

Hey, Hey...I just returned from my CT scan, and the results were good...no indication of cancer...the physical exam, which included putting a tube with a flashlight on the end down my nose to look at the tonsil, also did not show any signs of tumor...I am quite relieved, to say the least...and the lymph node appears to be cancer free as well. Happy day.

Of course, the ENT still wants to follow me closely, and a follow-up exam is scheduled in 2 months, and then every 3 months for a few years...but for now...the news is good, and it is quite possible that the abnormal PET scan a month ago was a false positive.
If I begin having symptoms...persistent sore throat, coughing up blood, etc. then it's right back for more exams and scans, but as long as i remain symptom free, and the clinical exams by the ENT remain good, there will not be a need for further scans.

On top of that, I had the feeding tube removed...I haven't used it in over a month, and now that it looks like there will not be any surgery, at least in the near future, if not forever, there was no need to leave it in. Let me give you an idea of how these doctors remove a surgically implanted feeding tube from one's stomach. First, the ENT leaves the room and sends in his resident to do the job. Then, the resident asked me to lift my shirt. I quickly noticed there was no anesthetic or mention of putting me out for the removal procedure. Instead, he asked me this question..."Are you ready?" I gave a weak "I guess" for an answer, and he proceeded to grab the tube, and with one mighty yank...

Yeeoooowwwwwwww! A piece of rubber about the size of a hockey puck passed through an opening a little smaller than the width of a pencil eraser. Then, while my stomach still felt like something from the movie "Alien" just happened, he asked me if I would like to keep the tube as a souvenir. I gave a similar response to him as I did to the tech who asked me if I would like to keep the molded mask made for my radiation treatment.

But...I am feeling very good about the results of the visit, and getting rid of that awful tube that I've been wearing around for the last 7 months.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR PRAYERS AND YOUR KIND THOUGHTS AND WELL WISHES...I CAN NEVER EXPRESS ENOUGH MY HEART FELT GRATITUDE FOR YOU MY FRIENDS. GOD BLESS YOU ALL!

AND PRAISE GOD , PRAISE GOD, PRAISE GOD...HEALER OF MY SOUL AS WELL AS BODY...I HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN, LORD... IN YOU I TRUST...YOUR LOVE IS BETTER THAN LIFE...

I may be cured, I may yet relapse...but I am going to strive to receive each day as a gift and at least in my very small circle of influence, try to return the blessing each day somehow in some way.


Peace

Checking in - Friday story - frightening trees

Ah, it's Friday, and all is well, As Julian of Norwich said: "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well,” It's a good theology. And it's been a reasonably good week, relatively uneventful, and I've been successful at living it a day at a time. That's good, too. And I've lived with the winter, rather than against it. I wanted to tell a story today, perhaps a childhood memory, as I did in the very early posts on this blog...but then I stumbled upon this remarkably cute little girl telling a story of her own, so I am going to share it here. I'm not that cute, and my stories aren't that creative.

I'll be sure to check in next Tuesday evening after I have my CT scan, and, hopefully results, if not sooner. For now, I'll let you enjoy this video...and...well...one more thing...speaking of winter, there is a line in somebody's poem that says..."if winter comes, can spring be far behind?" I dont remember who wrote the poem, or the title, but I remember that line from a High School English class. Actually, that's not how I remember that line. I remember that line because of this... I was working in a fast food joint (Sandy's Pizza). I was earning a whole $1.60 an hour. No air conditioning...sometimes I worked the counter...sometimes the grill...sometimes I made Pizza, sometimes I did all three simultaneously...it was a small operation that often got quite crowded. Anyway, standing behind the grill by the fryers and Pizza oven for 8 hours one hot August day watching people get off the bus coming back from Jones Beach every 30 minutes where the riders had spent the day frolicking in the cool waves of the Atlantic ocean with their girlfriends, I had a conversation with Vinnie Della Speranza, who worked at Sandy's with me and was also in my High School English class where the teacher, as I recall, made us memorize that poem. Vinnie was not really the kind of guy who quoted poetry. And at that point in my life, I certainly did not either. Vinnie and I were commiserating with each other about how neither of us had the nerve to ask a girl out...how we would both rather be at the beach with a girlfriend than working at Sandy's, and we were both wretched, worthless, and miserably hot and had a full day of work ahead of us, and were already falling behind filling the orders from the crowd waiting for their burgers and pizza. In the midst of a string of profanities that we were offering to each other to sum up our lives thus far, Vinnie turned to me and, looking quite serious, exclaimed, "If winter comes, can spring be far behind?" I laughed for the next six hours.

God bless you for keeping up with my little drama.

checking in - Friday ramble

Another week gone. It seems to me that I am eating more and more food, but still just maintaining my weight. The good news is that I am maintaining with real food, and eating seems to get a little easier each week...it's been awhile since having to drink that dreaded Ensure. Taste continues to come back.

Today is a tipping point. When I was in the middle of radiation and chemo, I was so weak that I spent many days going back and forth from treatment in the morning, and then spending the rest of the day in bed...awake, but too weak to move about. I had nothing but time on my hands, so I occasionally would crunch numbers in my head to pass the time. Here is an example: One day I began calculating the number of years, months and days that had passed after certain events... I received my Ph.D. diploma in Dec 1980. According to the date on my degree, I was 29 years, one month and 15 days old on that date...how far off was I, I wondered, from being a doctor for as long as I was not a doctor... the answer I figured out, was Feb 5, 2010 which would be 29 years, one month and 15 days from the day I got my degree. So... there you go...isn't that fascinating? Tomorrow when I wake up, I can say I've been a doctor MOST of my life. To be honest, when I made the mental calculation, I feared I would not live to see this day, based on how poorly I seemed to be faring and feeling that day. I am amazed I remembered...there is so much of those few months that I have already repressed.

We have had yet more snow last night, and possibly more to come on Sunday...nothing like the blizzard on the East Coast, thank God, but we've had our share of blizzards this winter. We are three months from May...that sounds like paradise. I am not alone in thinking this is one of the worst winters in memory. I must admit though, it was the kind of snow that clung to trees and this morning there was no wind and it was silent and still and the blanket of fresh whiteness that hung from the pines and spruce trees and covered the gray and dirty snow beneath was beautiful. Just beautiful. Now, though, I want it gone. Enough of snow beauty.

I am scheduled for a CT scan on February 16. I often feel pains in my neck, which say..."the tumor is back." I'm pretty sure it's mostly my imagination...or just part of the healing process, but living with uncertainty is oh so difficult. At the same time, I realize we ALL live with uncertainty about tomorrow. The comfort comes when I remember that God has a very good retirement plan, and it's not subject to a real estate or stock market bubble. It's more than enough to last.