Healing monster!

Bless me father.  It has been 3 days since my last entry.  And I've been doing pretty much nothing except keeping up on a stiff medicine and food regimen, all poured in to my J-tube.

(SKIP THIS paragraph) That and draining a neck wound (I know, eeewww!).  I also developed a yeast infection (thrush) in my mouth.  It is a potential side effect of the antibiotic I'm taking which also kills the beneficial bacterial present in my mouth.  Hey, it is present in your mouth too!  Without this bacteria, a certain yeast can thrive and turn your tongue white, make it feel fuzzy, and also cause your salivation glands to kick into overdrive.

It is really the little things that make the big differences.  Little positives make you feel great and little negatives make you feel lousy.  The big stuff, say, having your esophagus removed or going on that Disneyland vacation are always what you think will be the big deal.  But I find I'm almost never thinking about the fact that my stomach is in my chest... an idea that was a total freakout a month ago.  Instead I am thinking about what a drag it is to have a cough or miss some sleep.  And on that Disneyland vacation it will probably be an unplanned event, something small that happens on the trip to or from the park that will be the favorite story you tell your friends. 

So for three days I've been grumbling about all the little daily irritations and feeling elated by terrific conversations and correspondences.  Meanwhile, my body is getting what it needs in spades!  My brother-in-law Bruce (bless him) took me to get a blood test yesterday that would be required for my appointment with Dr. McCahill today, for which I was chauffeured-to by my brother, Rob (bless him too).  This was a post-surgery meeting to assess healing from all that trauma from the esophagectomy.  That test result was delivered by Nurse Navigator Coralyn during Dr. McCahill's exam.  She was just beaming!  "Best post-op blood result ever!", she said as she high-fived me.  Dr. McCahill took a look and said "Wow!" And then he tried to explain how some esoteric numbers on the report spelled out that my body was healing way in front of the curve.  Essentially my body is responding full-on to the nutrition.  They actually paged the nutritionist who  appeared at the door shortly, also beaming.  I don't understand exactly what those numbers meant but it was clearly all good!!  Those little cans of brown liquid that represent my sustenance are doing exactly what they are supposed to do.  I sort of forgot about my cough.

The pathology report also had come back for the lymph node adjacent to the esophageal tumor and as suspected, it was the same as the esophageal tumor.  So officially I am (or was) stage 3 for esophagus cancer.  That stage 3 will probably be amended to include some letters that represent the fact that the cancerous masses have been cut out.

Tomorrow I'll meet with Dr. Scott to learn more about what he is thinking regarding chemotherapy.  On Monday I meet with a ENT specialist, Dr. Winkle, who will look into my vocal cord dysfunction.  It is a common side effect for this surgery and apparently treatable.

Still healing (evidently, very fast).  Still not talking.

Aaargh! Time to hook up to the food pump.