Short Cancer Update, but with puppies

Tongue, April 2017, after my first surgery, at full extension: note that my centre line is not so central!

Tongue, Oct. 2021, after my second surgery: note that my centre line is even further to the left and that the tongue is not quite so long... damn I used to have a long tongue! Also note that the right side is much thicker than the left

Tongue 2022 TBA!

So here is an update on my cancer story, which is far from over: I went for a PET scan the other week, which is very much akin to the experience of getting an MRI. (Thanks for the great song about this experience, Derek Smalls! Harry Shearer, too. Did all you Spinal Tap fans get Derek's album? Red Cat can apparently order it in on vinyl still, and the CD is pretty cheap online. Very fun stuff!). 

PET scans go like this. You fast for six hours, get a radioactive sugar injected into you, then have to sit pretty much still, alone in a room, while your circulatory system distributes the sugar through your body. Cancer likes the sugar, so it "eats" it and makes it possible to see lumps when you get the scan - basically a big X-ray machine that you slide in and out of, strapped onto a slab, but, contra the boring interiors of the MRI, the one at the cancer agency had paisley line drawings and even little fish, looking like something out of one of those newfangled colouring books. Sorry, no photos there, but I got the cheerful female technician to snap a couple of me going into the machine, and one of my hand when she finally got the IV in. I gotta remember to shave myself next time in - I hate it when they rip off the tape!

After the scan, you are radioactive, and told not to be around newborns or pregnant women for 24 hours, because you can affect them. That sounds like hyperbole or just flat-out-horseshit, like when I joked that I was going to find a spider to bite, so see if I could turn it into humanspider, a new arachnid superhero... but it isn't. I had to hold back for a day or two while Erika went to the island to visit her parents' dog's new puppies and say hi to the family newborn.

After I stopped glowing in the dark, I went over myself for a weekend, just before our torrential downpours kicked off. After a day or two, I felt fit to hold a puppy myself. Amazing experience - only a couple days old, eyes still shut, warm and vulnerable and interested ONLY in sleeping and eating. Diehard puppy people can watch them suckling on Maeve, their mom, here.

The commute home was long, but uneventful, given that stretches of the Malahat would be washed out due to flooding the very next day. Soon upon our return, Erika and I went to the cancer agency to consult with the radiologist (?) - the person responsible for administering radiation therapy. The good news is - there are no tumours large enough anywhere in me for the PET Scan to catch (nothing as large as a centimeter across; tiny ones it won't detect). The bad news is - though I didn't fully piece this together until yesterday with some added explanation from the surgical oncologist who has operated on me twice before - that the margins of the materials cut from my tongue on September 29th, when biopsied, didn't show that they've caught it all; the cancer continued right to the margins of the removed material, which means it probably continues beyond those margins, as well. So I still very likely do have miniscule cancers in my tongue, which will grow. The doctor at the cancer agency, however, was in disagreement with my surgeon's recommendation of radiation therapy, which would be - she explains - extremely debilitating. I'd develop painful sores in my mouth. My saliva would dry up. Any teeth that weren't fully stable would have to be removed on the left side. A feeding tube would likely have to be inserted, and I would dramatically lose weight, including muscle. In the end, I'd be left an old man. "You're still relatively young," she said - I guess 53 is young, these days! - "and I just don't think this is the way to go. It would be better to treat this surgically."

She consulted with my surgical oncologist on a sort of conference call of experts earlier this week, and everyone agreed that surgery would be better, including my surgeon, ultimately. 

Yesterday I learned why the surgeon working on me was reluctant to go that route ("I can't just keep whittling away at your tongue," he had said). This time, it won't just be about removing a bit more of my tongue. He's taken as much of it as he can, and the next step will be to not only remove more of it, but to graft muscle tissue from my arm onto the tongue (and skin from my thigh to fill the hole in my arm). They also think a couple of lymph nodes in my neck should be removed and biopsied, to be on the safe side. Because this is a five hour procedure, and massively intrusive, the other thing I get to try to fit my mind around is, I'll need a tracheotomy - a temporary one, but still. 

Then there's a week to ten days in hospital while they monitor me for infections and bleeding. Good thing I'm still only halfway through Dune...

So be it. I'll roll with the advice that I'm being given, that this is the best bet, ultimately. Even if - the best case scenario - I get it done quickly, we're probably talking a few months' worth of recovery time. I'm probably out of commission until summer - though I do have some writing projects afoot, just for my blog, mostly email interviews. So I'm still going to be active here during my downtime. 

Good thing there are Black Friday sales at Severin and Vinegar Syndrome - I bought a healthy fistful of cult and horror movies to help see me through the recovery. Here's hoping I am well enough come March to enjoy the Sparks concert! (And EXTC - more to come on that!). 

Oh, by the way: the puppies have opened their eyes, started walking around and eating solid food, and they've probably tripled in size since the visit. Apparently Maeve is having to teach them that they don't need to stand in the food bowl to eat from it... I will probably get to visit them again before the next surgery, but it's looking like I'm gonna be out of commission through Christmas...