Things are progressing swiftly

When I was informed about this operation, I was told that the average hospital stay afterward was 11 days.  The shortest anyone stayed was 7 days.  Well, folks, we have a new record.  I'm getting sprung today after a mere 6 days.

I will now enter a home care phase. I'm still not healed by a long stretch, I just don't need a hospital to do things that can be done in the comfort of my own home.  Strike the nurses, cue the cats.

Look, ma!  No tubes!!

I have to get used to some big changes.

First of all my voice.  I thought it was mainly due to the nose tube but in fact my vocal chords got stretched or something so my voice sounds (and feels) weird. I still don't like to do a lot of talking because it can lead to painful coughing.  Alice called me last night and fed me Mafioso phrases to say so that she could hear how scary I could make them sound.

Secondly, my "stomach/esophagus"is very narrow.  Literally 3 sips of juice and I feel like I'm full to the brim and the brim is just behind my tonsils.  So brownish, semi-predigested nutrition is delivered by pump to my J-tube where it is delivered to the head of the digestion line, at the top of the small intestine.  I need to be hooked up to this pump 12 hours a day or I'll starve to death.  For the other 12 hours I need to try to increase intake of clear liquids for a while and then graduate to cloudy liquids (i.e. cream soups) and eventually chunkier stuff.  At some point they can do a procedure to stretch and widen the tissues and I can strap on a slice of pizza.

Thirdly, I've had major surgery so I just need time for wounds to heal.  Coughing is very painful to my gut and I cough a lot. No lifting or unassisted stair climbing.  Lots of medicine, all injected into my J-tube, adding to this bloated feeling (c'mon, colon, try to keep up!) And I have this gnarly neck scar that in the right light, would cause small children nightmares.  I may be available for small horror film roles on films without much in the way of special effects budgets.

Finally, all this healing only leads up to phase two: the chemotherapy phase. (Speaking of low budget horror films, there's a title for you.)  The pathology report for the tumor and infected lymph nodes is expected today.  The evil Dr. Scott is lurking just around the corner planning his next diabolical treatment aimed at , T-Cell lymphoblastic lymphoma as well as a side dish of poison set aside for residue of esophageal tumor cells.

Starting to understand how Sisyphus feels.