Can soup run out your nose? Cancer, life and all that stuff.
One of my Mother’s favorite replies to a question that
required some debate was a quote from the poem by Lewis Carroll in his book Through
the Looking-Glass.
As it is April the first, thank you Mom and Lewis Carroll, for these words that have endured for almost a
century and a half that just seemed so right for
the beginning of my blog.
Yes, it does, soup runs out my nose, coffee, wine spritzer, club soda and wine, fizzy IPA beers, not every time, but just often enough to be irritating and socially not cool.
My blog is not all about cancer, it is about life, living with the beast and leaving no room for it to overreach like the bloodsucking leach it is. Living true to wisdom of my parents who showed us how to find joy in life. In my blog there will be some forays into cancer, aging, family, grandchildren, pets; in no order, and some of the challenges of my ‘new normal’ that is a speaking and swallowing disability. I shall also go down the bunny trails that my chemo brain may take us. I am an authority on me and my life, I make no claims to have brilliant insights, cures for cancer or how to heal a broken heart; (I have had my share of both) nor can I claim to tell you how to live a perfect life or bake a perfect soufflé, there are other websites for that. I have lived, learned and loved along my journey, the first half in Africa, South Africa, the second half and then some, in America. Leaving your home makes you an immigrant, wow, I had no idea how tough that would be, it was before the internet and cell phones. There is a rich field of stories to mine – and in that lie some nuggets to be unearthed.
Now, a cancer survivor (although I despise that label) so many labels, sometimes I despair at the boxes we are named into, they can be so constricting; wife, ex-wife, mother, mother-in-law, grandmother, immigrant, the list is endless I suppose. An animal lover too, for all my sins I was chosen by my four-legged worthless guard dog, and faithful tail-wagger. She picked me - who wouldn’t keep a thin, dehydrated, flea-ridden puppy that wriggles under the fence?
In time there will be posts and journeys through my detours to smack down the beast of Oral Cancer, Head and Neck Cancer, Non-HPV Base of Tongue, Squamous Cell these are just some of the medical names or descriptions for this heinous beast. Some of mine are not so proper but then cancer is not proper, it is a rapacious, miserable thieving monster that has imposed itself into our lives and culture. A large niche market in the medical field, a billion-dollar industry based on this one word cancer, whose cells indiscriminately scatter destruction in those whose lives it attacks. Yet for others it is their work, their life, their passion to study, serve and heal, buy, build, sell, without the one we could not have the other.
In my blog I will explore organizations who are out there to help, share stories, mine and others, look at past and present treatments, as well as look at the world around us, the serious and the silly, the good and the ridiculously stupid things that humans say and do. We may well even tippy-toe into murky waters of the no-no topics too.
To set the scene, I have dueled with this nasty beast for twenty years. The first skirmish was in 1999, three little bimps, they were bimps, not bumps, on my tongue, which I kinda sort of ignored, as I figured they would go away. During an annual physical, my doctor missed them, and only after I pointed them out, and asked her what they were, did she express horror and impose a sense of extreme urgency for further medical intervention. The steps included an immediate biopsy, a visit to an ENT, an MRI, then the removal of the offending cancerous lumps, by removing a little bit of my tongue, all this in lightning fast time.
A picture of said bumps will follow soon. Watch this space….keep watching
The return of the beast was in 2007, and the beginning of life-changing medical treatments. Chemo-therapy and radiation, a long and miserable series of treatments, basically the summer of hell for me and my family and all those kind friends who stepped up and in to help - and there were many. Thank you again.
Debilitating side effects, significant weight loss ( at the time I celebrated that side-effect), indescribable pain, and ultimately, we figured we beat the beast into submission. That little hiatus was short lived, as within two years the beast returned with vengeance in 2009. Under the skilled surgical hands of Head and Neck surgeons and Reconstructive Plastic surgeons at MD Anderson, my new normal truly began, with the amputation of about half of my tongue. Such a lovely word, amputation, it always makes me think of civil war butcher doctors lopping off limbs. So, my crutch was sewn on! A chunk of my wrist was sewn on to the poor little left-over bit of my tongue, this is supposed to minimize the speech limp – speech limp is that a thing? Of course it is - half a tongue would create a speech limp wouldn’t it? (This is beginning to sound a bit like Monty Python.)
To repair the gaping hole on the donor site of my wrist, a chunk of my thigh was slivered off and sewn onto my wrist. Kinda like a patchwork quilt. A little bit here, and tack on a bit here. This fun procedure is known as a ‘hemiglossectomy’. This was to be the first of three surgeries on my neck and tongue in just over a month. It was not supposed to be that way, but life happens.
In our meanderings we will explore just how this tumor removal also took away my speech, my beautiful accent and voice and my ability to do wicked imitations, my voice was my work, oral cancer took that away. It also took away my ability to eat normally, and a host of the most unexpected things that poke their ugly head into my every- day reality. A larger part of my purpose in this blog is to give ‘voice’ to those who go through similar procedures, surgeries, or are about to enter the dreadfully tough halls of this disease.
It is not a rant against doctors, or modalities of healing, it will be an honest place to explore treatments and ‘things we have heard’ and the realities of what life-saving treatments can do to alter the quality of life. There will be the good, the bad and the ugly, as well as funny till tears run down your cheeks.
Until next time.
Have a great week, do one good thing for yourself each day and smile at a stranger, not for too long, or they may think you are weird.
"The time has come," the Walrus said,
“To
talk of many things;
Of
shoes- and ships-and sealing-wax
Of
cabbages - and kings-
And
why the sea is boiling hot -
And
whether pigs have wings,"
Yes, it does, soup runs out my nose, coffee, wine spritzer, club soda and wine, fizzy IPA beers, not every time, but just often enough to be irritating and socially not cool.
My blog is not all about cancer, it is about life, living with the beast and leaving no room for it to overreach like the bloodsucking leach it is. Living true to wisdom of my parents who showed us how to find joy in life. In my blog there will be some forays into cancer, aging, family, grandchildren, pets; in no order, and some of the challenges of my ‘new normal’ that is a speaking and swallowing disability. I shall also go down the bunny trails that my chemo brain may take us. I am an authority on me and my life, I make no claims to have brilliant insights, cures for cancer or how to heal a broken heart; (I have had my share of both) nor can I claim to tell you how to live a perfect life or bake a perfect soufflé, there are other websites for that. I have lived, learned and loved along my journey, the first half in Africa, South Africa, the second half and then some, in America. Leaving your home makes you an immigrant, wow, I had no idea how tough that would be, it was before the internet and cell phones. There is a rich field of stories to mine – and in that lie some nuggets to be unearthed.
Now, a cancer survivor (although I despise that label) so many labels, sometimes I despair at the boxes we are named into, they can be so constricting; wife, ex-wife, mother, mother-in-law, grandmother, immigrant, the list is endless I suppose. An animal lover too, for all my sins I was chosen by my four-legged worthless guard dog, and faithful tail-wagger. She picked me - who wouldn’t keep a thin, dehydrated, flea-ridden puppy that wriggles under the fence?
In time there will be posts and journeys through my detours to smack down the beast of Oral Cancer, Head and Neck Cancer, Non-HPV Base of Tongue, Squamous Cell these are just some of the medical names or descriptions for this heinous beast. Some of mine are not so proper but then cancer is not proper, it is a rapacious, miserable thieving monster that has imposed itself into our lives and culture. A large niche market in the medical field, a billion-dollar industry based on this one word cancer, whose cells indiscriminately scatter destruction in those whose lives it attacks. Yet for others it is their work, their life, their passion to study, serve and heal, buy, build, sell, without the one we could not have the other.
In my blog I will explore organizations who are out there to help, share stories, mine and others, look at past and present treatments, as well as look at the world around us, the serious and the silly, the good and the ridiculously stupid things that humans say and do. We may well even tippy-toe into murky waters of the no-no topics too.
To set the scene, I have dueled with this nasty beast for twenty years. The first skirmish was in 1999, three little bimps, they were bimps, not bumps, on my tongue, which I kinda sort of ignored, as I figured they would go away. During an annual physical, my doctor missed them, and only after I pointed them out, and asked her what they were, did she express horror and impose a sense of extreme urgency for further medical intervention. The steps included an immediate biopsy, a visit to an ENT, an MRI, then the removal of the offending cancerous lumps, by removing a little bit of my tongue, all this in lightning fast time.
A picture of said bumps will follow soon. Watch this space….keep watching
The return of the beast was in 2007, and the beginning of life-changing medical treatments. Chemo-therapy and radiation, a long and miserable series of treatments, basically the summer of hell for me and my family and all those kind friends who stepped up and in to help - and there were many. Thank you again.
Debilitating side effects, significant weight loss ( at the time I celebrated that side-effect), indescribable pain, and ultimately, we figured we beat the beast into submission. That little hiatus was short lived, as within two years the beast returned with vengeance in 2009. Under the skilled surgical hands of Head and Neck surgeons and Reconstructive Plastic surgeons at MD Anderson, my new normal truly began, with the amputation of about half of my tongue. Such a lovely word, amputation, it always makes me think of civil war butcher doctors lopping off limbs. So, my crutch was sewn on! A chunk of my wrist was sewn on to the poor little left-over bit of my tongue, this is supposed to minimize the speech limp – speech limp is that a thing? Of course it is - half a tongue would create a speech limp wouldn’t it? (This is beginning to sound a bit like Monty Python.)
To repair the gaping hole on the donor site of my wrist, a chunk of my thigh was slivered off and sewn onto my wrist. Kinda like a patchwork quilt. A little bit here, and tack on a bit here. This fun procedure is known as a ‘hemiglossectomy’. This was to be the first of three surgeries on my neck and tongue in just over a month. It was not supposed to be that way, but life happens.
In our meanderings we will explore just how this tumor removal also took away my speech, my beautiful accent and voice and my ability to do wicked imitations, my voice was my work, oral cancer took that away. It also took away my ability to eat normally, and a host of the most unexpected things that poke their ugly head into my every- day reality. A larger part of my purpose in this blog is to give ‘voice’ to those who go through similar procedures, surgeries, or are about to enter the dreadfully tough halls of this disease.
It is not a rant against doctors, or modalities of healing, it will be an honest place to explore treatments and ‘things we have heard’ and the realities of what life-saving treatments can do to alter the quality of life. There will be the good, the bad and the ugly, as well as funny till tears run down your cheeks.
Until next time.
Have a great week, do one good thing for yourself each day and smile at a stranger, not for too long, or they may think you are weird.
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