Monday, October 29, 2007

Well, this weekend was not what I had in mind. I started to notice life becoming a series of pains on Thursday morning, a terrible pain when I’d try to swallow food or water. (I’d love, just for one evening, to be able to drink through a few bottles of water rapidly. That, my friends, is my dream.) The cough drops don’t do anything anymore.

Saturday was my toughest day yet, though I did manage to go to the grocery store with my wife. There were no problems with that, though I wished I could have a few sips of water. I also bought a case of spring water bottles, as I am beginning to run low on them. They’re here, just in case.

Actually, Sunday was my toughest day yet. I had to take the medication at 7:30a – just two teaspoons of the thick, syrupy stuff – to be able to do the Sunday Show review for RedState.com, the most important conservative weblog (blog) on the internet. (I’m not tooting my horn, which is probably burnt to a crisp like the back of my tongue, as its importance derives not from me.) While writing, I found myself starting to doze off at the keyboard, something I attribute to the treatment, the lack of sleep the previous night, and the lack of water. (I still do get some water, and I treasure every sip I can drink. Especially the ones which go down the proper pipe.)

The medication, which was more than effective after my September 5 biopsy, isn’t quite doing its job, but I’ve been eating fairly normal meals, albeit with some pain. Diane made me soft carrots, shredded beef tips, and mashed potatoes for dinner on Sunday. And sips of water helped to keep my throat loosened. The pain also can be pushed aside.

And looking at what I learned last week, it seems not entirely so bad. Last Monday, I learned that week 6 of 8 in my treatment schedule begins on Wednesday. Last Wednesday, if I recall, I learned that they would finally begin treating the lymph nodes in the back of my neck, as a precaution, beginning today. That has happened. I can only guess that they go back to treating my throat next Monday, but I learned on Thursday that I no longer have that menacing tumor in my throat.

Along came Monday, and Diane and I went in to the Center for Cancer Care, arriving at 8:30 for an 8:30 treatment, the time having been moved back fifteen minutes because they had to use a new room. It was not the new room which I had been told would be used; that door was shut and the sign outside indicated that the room was designed for Brachytherapy, which is not what I was to receive (as far as I know). Brachytherapy involves putting the radiation source in a bizarre place near the tumor and letting forth with intense radiation, and my tumor isn’t here, Mrs. Torrence. (That’s lifted from the 1980 film, The Shining. I just had to watch some TV giggly girl on CBS list it as one of her favorite Halloween movies, and she knew nothing of how it was reviewed when it was first released, though she acted as if she did. She had not been either born or dropped off by the UFO.)

Anyway, I was led into Accelerator Room Two, which is similar to Accelerator Room One except that it was a larger radiation machine and its door is located on the opposite wall to the first accelerator Room.

The bald tech said, “You do know that you’re changing you treatment this week.” I said, yeah, they want to nuke some lymph nodes while protecting my spinal column. He grunted, something like that.

They also had to take some “pictures.” I took off my shirt and lay on the bench with my head in the small, plastic head-holder, just like in the other room.

They put in the mouthpiece and clamped on the mask as always. Trapped, I was forced to inhale the acrid breath of one of the techs as he scribbled on my mask. And my right eyebrow began to itch. And the two of them kept mumbling numbers, either to themselves or to each other: “110, 118, 112, 110.” I felt scribbling on the mask, smelled the marker, so it is probable or at least possible that they were writing these arbitrary numbers onto the mask. Which is what Sheri the radiation babe had done in the third radiation room last.

They took their “pictures,” then they placed a piece of wood next to each shoulder, I assume to block this special electron radiation from melting my spinal cord into one of the nastier forms of slag.

Then, after about half an hour – much longer than usual – I was done and given the promise that it would be much quicker tomorrow. I returned to my wife in the waiting room to wait – what else? – for the doctor. Shocker is out this week, but the emeritus Dr. Clement was there in his stead. Clement brought his own nurse, who might also have been dragged out of retirement.

My weight was down several pounds from my none-too-stocky frame, which I explained was due to the throat pain. She asked if I had a feeding tube and suggested that I get one.

Dr. Clement came in next. He also mentioned a feeding tube. And he told me that Hydrocodone makes one irregular and I should take and over-the-counter stool softener. I asked him to prescribe something which worked better than this Hydrocodone, thinking of some brutal narcotic painkiller, but he brushed me off. Instead, he wrote another prescription for the Hydrocodone and this stuff which will numb the back of my tongue for ten minutes so that I can eat, Lidocaine.

Dr. Clement looked down my throat – “It’s a mess down there.” – and detected a yeast infection. Diane tried to dissuade him from this diagnosis, telling him that Dr. Howells had not detected yeast but rather standard tissue after being blasted with radiation. Dr. Clement told her: “I’ve only been doing this for 35 years.” He prescribed a liquid from of Fluconazole, the medicine which had taken care of an infection and made it much easier to swallow several weeks ago.

For this reason, I hope that Clement was correct in his diagnosis. Of course, this would mean that Howells was wrong, and he’s the guy who told me that my tumor was gone. We’ll let the irony stop there, as I’d sooner not think about it.

But Clement asked me if I smoked. If it didn’t hurt a little when I tried to talk, I might have joked about medical marijuana, man, and you can run cars off hemp, dude, legalize, but I didn’t. I have not smoked a cigarette in almost exactly seven years, and I haven’t wanted one for about 6 ½. At first, it was because it was just a nasty habit all around; now, I note that it probably helped to make my body declare war against me.

That battle, it seems, is all but over. I’m just anxious to wrap up the treatment and begin to heal.