Merci beaucoups, mon ami!Originally Posted by Blaze
Here's the short version (don't worry, I had this saved elsewhere):
At the end of summer 2010 my wife Kim noticed a lump on my neck. We went to the docs right away, but since I don't smoke the odds of it being cancerous were very small. I had a needle biopsy that also came back clear. I had a bunch of gigs, with rock bands and church-related, during October, so I scheduled the removal of the "benign cyst" for November.
On Nov. 17 they did the surgery and discovered a small cancerous tumor on my left tonsil, plus a couple spots on some adjoining lymph nodes. So they took out the tonsil (the "hard way," though the neck), the 2 spotty nodes, and another 18 nodes to be safe.
In mid-December, once I was healed up from the surgery, I started radiation 5 days a week (M-F, 35 total zaps) and one chemo infusion every Tuesday, 9 chemo's total. I finished radiation zaps Friday 2/4 and chemo Tuesday 2/8. That should get rid of anything too small to see or find. Now all I have to do is recover from the treatment! I should hopefully be able to "sing" once it's over, as up until a few weeks ago, once the surgery healed, I could. Not currently booking anything though.
Everything is on schedule and prognosis is for full recovery. Will lose a salivary gland function forever, and it will be awhile before the chemo is out of my system, my taste buds heal, and I can taste things again. For a week or two things were pretty dicey and I was having a hard time even drinking Ensure liquid (a "nutrition drink"); solid food other than a milkshake or ice cream is long gone, too painful. That will come back eventually as my mouth and throat heal up. But at least I gots drugs, and plenty of sick days banked up at work. Have lost about 25 pounds, will probably lose a bit more.
Went to the chemo lab daily for one more week after the last actual chemo drug infusion, not for chemo per se but for a saline solution I.V. in order to avoid dehydration and the necessity of admission to the hospital, that ended this Tuesday (yesterday). Have mainly worked through the whole thing, although have been unable to work the last couple weeks unless in conjunction w/a co-worker's schedule to catch rides w/her, due to too many opioids (narcotic pain killers) in my system to safely drive a car.
Have a bosstastic "Hang 'Em High" scar like Clint Eatwood's in the movie of the same name! My mouth, throat and gums are still pretty torn up from the radiation. After a few weeks of healing up, I'll be given some sort of scan to confirm that the cancer is all gone. Right now I'm just staying doped up on pain meds, and trying eat, and to get some work done during "lucid intervals," haha!
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