Sunday, November 19, 2006

Ned – My favorite farm worker

I had my first post-treatment cancer scan this week. I was pretty apprehensive prior to the scan. For me, as I said in the previous post, even though everything has gone so well with the treatment and the operation, with the post-op biopsies being clean, fast recovery, and now feeling as fit as I ever have, there is still that lurking fear that perhaps one cell got away. That it’s moving around inside the newly modeled bronzed Adonis body that I now have, looking for a nice little place to settle down and have gazillions of children. I’m sure that fear is with every cancer survivor to some extent. And as the time comes closer to actually look inside the body to see if the children are there, the apprehension increases.
So I scuttled off to the hospital last Thursday with this tiny dark cloud of concern over my head, trying and failing to hide it with cheerful banter. The process does nothing to cheer you up either, drinking copious amounts of barium sludge (berry flavored – yeah right) and then lying in the washing machine while it exposes your insides to the world. I had the scan at 8:00 a.m., but had to wait until 11:00 a.m. to see the ologists and the little dark cloud slowly grew during the wait.
Good news however. Still no evidence of disease – NED. This is now my favorite word. It used to bring to mind a grizzled old farm worker. “Arrr, Ned lad, will e go and milk the cows, oi fancy a bowl of cornflakes for me tea”. Now it has a whole new meaning. The little dark cloud dissipates, leaving the merest wisp of concern ready to slowly grow over the next three months to the next scan.
The other big deal over the last two weeks has been the start of self-dilations. I gave you the basic details in the previous post. Last week I decided to give it a try. Before the first go, I was concerned about the gag reflex and how to get over it. So I turned to my trusty computer and innocently Googled “overcoming gag reflex”. Whoa. Good grief. Well, I suppose I should have known. I had opened a gate to some of the most interesting web sites and news groups that I have ever seen. I suppose if I’d given it some thought I would not have been so surprised, but I was.
Anyway, among all this stuff was a web site for dentists, with lots of tips on how to overcome the gag reflex. One strong tip was for a throat spray called “Snore Relief”. Meant to relax the tissues in the throat, so off I went and bought some. It does seem to work, not completely but enough. I popped the tube – it’s called a bougie for some reason – into my mouth and guided it down. It got a little way down and encountered the restriction, so I chickened out at that point. I was concerned about tearing the stomophagus that I now possess if I forced the issue. I decided to wait until I saw the surgeon and take some advice. Sure enough, he said to whack it on down, so since then I have carried out daily dilations. I’m still not all the way down yet but a little more each day. It seems to be working out well. It’s really quite unpleasant, but better than getting a general anesthetic every two weeks.

Sunday, November 05, 2006

I’m tubeless!

I went to see the ologists last week. It was the first time I had seen the chemo guy and the radiation guy since they completed treating me at the end of June. They were absolutely delighted with the outcome of my treatment and operation. I heard the words “pathologically complete response” several times during my visit. I, of course, had loads of questions. Once you’ve had cancer, no matter how positive the outcome you know there’s a risk of recurrence, of that one little bastard cell that escaped and is now setting up residence in some other organ. So I asked about “insurance chemo”, the application of further chemo treatment to search and destroy. Because, as I said, I resisted the effects of chemo reasonably well. “Except for the heart attack” they chimed in almost perfect unison. Yes, well, there is that. I had mentally relegated that episode to insignificance, but they reminded me that it was an extremely close call, that the chemo is nasty poisonous stuff, that the odds were really good that they had indeed got it all, and certainly not worth the risk of further nastiness. OK, I’m convinced. Won’t stop me getting twitchy every three months before the cancer scans though.
My major success on that visit was probably the most mundane – I got the surgeon to remove the hated feeding tube. I haven’t needed to use it since about two or three weeks after the operation. Even though I’ve needed dilations, I have resisted feeding through the tube. The thing is just ridiculous, flopping about next to my action man kit. I’ve been going to the gym regularly for a while now and it’s surprising how wide-eyed people get when they see this little rubber tube sticking out of your belly when you walk out of the shower. So I asked – actually insisted – that he take it out. Which he did on the spot. No stitches, which surprised me. The thing just closes up and heals. So I’ve now got two navels, a new one just to the side and up a bit from the original.
Another question I posed while I was there was about self-dilations. I read an esophageal cancer news group and I’d seen there a few references to self-dilation. The surgeon was a bit surprised when I brought the subject up, but he said if I could stomach it (good pun opportunity there) then he would let me try it. I had a dilation scheduled for the next day, so after that was complete he came to see me and gave me another tube. It’s a bit intimidating actually. It’s made of a silicone-type material so it’s pretty slick when wet, and has a tapered flexible tip. It’s heavy, filled with a tungsten gel so the weight helps it to go down. To use it, you make like a sword swallower – head back, open wide, and slide it down. Well, saying it was easy, I’m pretty sure that doing it will be another story. He doesn’t want me to do this until two weeks after the dilation that he just did, so look out for the next blog update to see if I was successful or not.