Surgery Follow-up Visit

Did you know that “follow up” is only spelled “follow up” if it is a verb? Otherwise, when it is a noun or adjective you should spell it follow-up. Things like this make me wonder what the hell people were thinking as the English language developed. Like no one is reading a sentence and going “they spelled follow-up like it is a noun, but I think they meant it to be a verb. I’m so confused, and now I can’t figure out what to do.” There are many things on my list of what to do if I should ever invent time travel. I’ve just added following up on the hyphenation of follow-up because it’s just dumb and unnecessary.

The Actual Visit
The visit itself was rather benign. As often happens in healthcare, I’m told things that will happen that never happen. Or conversely, sometimes things happen that I’m never told about. Kind of funny when you think about it. Either way, there was no swallow study. No scope up my nose and down my throat. No real assessment. Just some admonishment for being a bit dehydrated. As well as denial of any continued narcotic pain medicine. Hmmmm…I wonder if approving the latter would have helped the former? Logically yes. But that probably isn’t in a medical journal anywhere, thus it didn’t make it into the care plan.

I did get my staples pulled. I also got my drainage tube out (pic of tube and bag before they came out). This means I no longer wear my fancy t-shirts that snap/velcro along my shoulder for easy access. I’m back to plain old Rob t-shirts. Oh and plain old showers. That’s probably the best part. Finding where to hang your JP drain while you shower is a bit of a challenge. Unless you have pierced nipples. It’s funny what you think about in the shower. But had I ever been drunk enough in the wrong group of friends to wind up with my nipples pierced, it would have made quite the convenient place to attach the little safety pin that held the JP drain in place.

There isn’t any additional follow-up right now. Basically they told me I’ll have the more intense adjuvant radiation, which we already knew. And they said they’d see me back for a PET scan 3 months post radiation. Which, really they might or they might not. Because this whole surgery was just part of the Rob cancer puzzle. Almost a detour in a way since the polymorphous carcinoma was a surprise. Well more of a surprise than cancer usually is. Most likely I’ll just return my care to Dr. Durm (the lead oncologist on my team) and he’ll tell me if I see the ENT team again. But next up is Radiation Oncology.

Speech Therapy
Well, I guess in a way I know I will see the ENT team again. Part of that team is speech therapy and boy do I need it. When talking about surgery most of the conversation revolved around cutting out part of my tongue and how “resilient” the base of the tongue was for things like this. No one said a word about having a fat tongue. And boy do I have a fat tongue. It’s funny concentrating on pronunciation and how my lips, tongue, and mouth move in unison to form my particular brand of Hoosier twang. I’ve joined the untoward number of people who can’t accurately pronounce the last name “Culross”. It’s more “Culwoss” than anything else. Still, I let Lindsey tell the registrar what my last name was.

Speech Therapy will be a weekly occurrence for me. Partly to monitor my speech as my tongue returns to normal. Partly to monitor my speech as I begin radiation. Of course radiation to the throat/neck can cause all sorts of issues. Let’s kill the cancer cells but leave a bunch of tongue tying scar tissue in its absence. It’s funny the trade we are willing to make in the name of being healthy. For now I’m told I sound like a cute pre-schooler. Or to say it more Rob like “I souwnd wike a coot pwee schoower”. Really got to work on those R’s, S’s, and T’s.

I Swallow. It Hurts. But a Little Less
Slowly but surely the pain from swallowing is getting better. And it kind of has to because as I mentioned earlier Lori, the PA, believes that all patients heal before their pain meds run out. Or maybe she’s just a sadist. Hard to tell. But she’s still good at what she does. Even if she doesn’t believe in smiling or pain meds.

The best way to describe what is going on is to just think about a wound you might have had on your skin. Slowly but surely, over time, it heals and gets smaller and smaller until the whole thing is back to normal. That’s what it feels like in my throat. The spot that hurts gets smaller and smaller. The hurt, while no less intense, gets a bit smaller and smaller as well. And hopefully here in the next few days it will be gone. I’m still mostly on a liquid diet because of the fat tongue. But I did discover that if I break up chocolate chip cookies into small slices and feed them in between the teeth on the left side of my mouth I can chew them up pretty decently and enjoy the flavor. That might be my biggest win of the week.

Freaking Dr. Sim
You might recall the saga of my neck scar. Or lack thereof. I thought I might have come out ahead on this one because the scar is where my neck meets my shoulder vs where it meets my chin. It’s a much more visible place. Like one you’d want when you walk into a biker bar and claim your rightful level of fear amongst your brethren. I mean, don’t mess with the guy with a neck scar. But Dr. Sim being the fantastic surgeon he is made a rather straight line that is healing well. Aka, no jagged neck scar. Not only that, but it will probably hide nicely in the fold of my
double chin. That’s like a double whammy. I mean it’s one thing to tilt your neck a bit to show off a jagged scar. It’s quite another to tell everyone to hold on a minute so you can lift up your 2nd chin to show what may not even look like a scar in a few weeks.

We’re Listening to 97.3 Now
In my everyday life, I’m typically tuned between 102 and 105. That’s not FM though. That’s kg. As in kilograms. It just so happens that my weight in kilograms fits neatly into the FM scale and thankfully is nowhere near the AM dial. All that to say I fluctuate (fatutate?) a bit between 225 and 230 pounds. Why yes we did shop in the “husky” section when I was a kid and I was actually a bit heavier at my peak as an adult. Around 250 pounds to be exact. Which takes us way off the FM dial at a cool 113 kg. That was pre stem cell transplant though. Stem cell transplant is one of the more gruesome and successful diets I’ve been on. One might even call it a liquid diet because liquid is exactly what comes out of…well you get the idea. On the transplant diet I got down to around 170 pounds or a svelte 77 kg. And then vacations, holidays, and Starbucks got me in to my present day range over the last 10 years.

But I’m once again on a downward weight trajectory. Although the TORS diet isn’t nearly as gruesome or effective thankfully. Friday I weighed in at 97.3 kg or 214 pounds (well technically 214.5 but we all know you round down when talking about weight). I will most likely lose more weight for a variety of reasons including radiation. It seems like a bit of a cheat to lose weight without trying, but then again it’s not exactly like the juice is worth the squeeze here. With cancer you just take the wins wherever you can get them.