The bottom line has been the side-effects of the radiation. When I awoke this AM, they were awful, my throat felt burnt inside and tight. I did manage a few gulps of water, though, and after sucking about half a lozenge, a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios. The other half of the lozenge? I had put it on a piece of paper on the table, but the black cat opted to lie on it. I separated it from him, of course, and Roscoe didn’t seem to care. (He’s named for Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, the silent-era comedy actor and director, though the cat is not fat, does not wear a hat, but behaves like a gnat. Imagine that. Roscoe does, however, have issues.)

The setback is for the cancer, though, and not for me.

We went to the cancer care center thinking none the different. They, meaning “the man” or “the machine,” would zap me then I’d go see Dr. Howells, the ENT guy who had diagnosed me.

They were a little late calling me back for the radiation treatment, but that was an in-and-out prospect. I had my blood taken yesterday, so we went straight to Dr. Howells’s office, across Howard Avenue from the hospital, in a set of buildings put there for doctors’ offices. And we waited only a few minutes, with CNN playing its closed-captions on the TV on the wall. Diane noted that Kiran Chetry, the CNN gal, was a “traitor.” I reminded her that Kiran had been shown the door at FNC, which I don’t know to be the case but it sounded good.

We were taken back to an examination room, and Dr. Howells came in after a while. He asked how I was doing, and I told him. And that I suspected the Yeast had returned to my throat. He slowly examined my throat with his fingers, the tumor and the lymph nodes: “That appears to be shrinking nicely.” This sounded great to me. Yeah, I had prayed that it be taken away, but this was nothing at which to laugh, let alone curse. There is always the bit about: “May thy will, not mine, be done.” That in itself makes me happy.

Dr. Howells said that because my throat was swelling, had been damaged by the radiation, he had to put a laryngoscope (or some similar thing) into my nose to look down my throat. He said that he doubted that it looked much different, what with the effects of the radiation, but he wanted to do this “just this one time. We probably won’t need it next time.”

He sprayed some monocaine into my right nostril, though I am very aware that monocaine exists only in fiction, but that’s what it sounded like to me. He left the room while it took effect, returning several minutes later to gently put a soft tube up my nose. Not far. He asked to be certain it didn’t hurt, but it more tickled than anything else. I was about to hear the first word on my tumor since it had been diagnosed almost a month ago.

Again, I’ve been concerned about the side-effects, both of the radiation and of the chemo; the cancer itself, no one told me even when I asked. What Dr. Howell’s finally did tell me actually floored me. Smiling broadly, he said that he saw no sign of the tumor or any residual cancer. As much as I am bothered by the side-effects, as awful as all this is, it is nothing beside that damned tumor. And the damned tumor is gone.

I expected that result so soon more than I foresaw the initial diagnosis, as I have prayed and have had many great folks praying for me and I wasn’t thinking of cancer at all when it was noticed. It caught me by surprise, though, to go from hoping and praying that the tumor would be gone by the time my treatment ended to know that it was gone and everything now was for certainty.

That being said, Dr. Lieb’s office called in the afternoon and demanded that I get my backside down there and see him pronto. He was leaving town or going deer hunting, or some such. (Lieb is the medical oncologist (chemo) who told us a few days before therapy began that this would be the most painful experience I’d ever have, that I would be writhing on a surface with no control of my functions, and that I had probably better pick out a casket now.

This afternoon, he was more reasonable. I’m doing very well, but he took that I carried a spring water bottle as a sign that I could no longer produce saliva, the thought of which he enjoyed. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. I carry it because I want to continue to swallow and because my mouth sometimes gets dry.

Anyway, he showed me my weekly platelet count, and it has dropped way down. Because my chemo is designed to sensitive my neck to the radiation, not to fight the (now missing) cancer, he was going to “hold” me this time. My fears that he would put me in the hospital overnight were short lived, as he meant only that I had to take tomorrow off chemotherapy.

He did not that the chemo was doing it’s job, as my neck was red. That’s come to be only this week, really, and I have the stuff – Radia Gel – I got on Monday.

Well, we’ll see how the rest of this goes.

As always, I need thoughts and I need prayers. These next 3 ½ weeks of treatment will be rough, and then I have weeks thereafter until I am healed from the treatment. I hope I’m eating solid food by Christmas.