Well, Game 7 is over, only one team is going on to the Tumoriffic Series, and then the real fun will begin!
(Note: yes, I know this is a long one, but still, try not to just skip to the end. This is Art! You gotta read it in order!)
The Day Before the Day Before the Day Before
As was the plan, K/Best Wife Ever (K/BWE) and I flew to the City of Steel on Nov. 3. The flight was uneventful. My parents, (Dr. Dad and Dr. Mom) had driven all the way up from my old home town in MD, and they picked us up at the airport. The Residence Marriott was too declasse for my parents, so they decided to stay at a fancier Marriott called The Oaklander. They paid for a room for us to stay there, too. (BTW, the hotel is upside down. The lobby is actually on the tenth floor.)
For dinner, we drove out to one of the best and strangest restaurants I have ever been to. Far out in the suburbs, Superior Motors is located in a former car dealership in an otherwise isolated neighborhood, literally across the street from an operating steel mill that has billowing smokestacks and purple flames rising from tubes.
Inside, the decor is stark, the benches made of concrete with cushions. The food was delicious and original, really first rate. If you're ever in the City of Steel, go there, especially if you're getting an angiogram the next day!
I hardly slept that night. For some reason, I was anxious. Silly me.
The Day Before the Day Before
November 4 was get a CT and meet some doctors day. I met the Vascular Surgeon of Steel who would do the angiogram on me on November 5. If you remember, the idea of that was to map out the arteries supplying my tumor and block it off so I wouldn't bleed to death. (Awfully nice of them!)
I was supposed to see the ENT Surgeon of Steel and meet the Neurosurgeon of Steel, but they were in a complicated surgery that went late, so they never came. We met with the Fellow of Steel instead.
That night, we ate at the restaurant right next to the lobby on the 10th floor of the hotel. (I just can't get over that 10th floor lobby!)
And then it was time to go to bed. Next day, I would have the angiogram, and I would be admitted to the University of Steel Medical Center. I had a little anxiety and trouble sleeping that night. I can't imagine why.
The Day Before
Having an angiogram wouldn't be on my Tourism Top Ten list for the City of Steel. After Superior Motors, it was quite a letdown.
First of all, there was no wine or other intoxicant involved, for reasons I will explain below. Also, they made me take out my hearing aids, because they needed to image my head, so there went the witty conversation. Then, instead of serving me a delicious squash curry soup with a cranberry preserve for a starter, or giving me the equivalent of a delicious red wine so I that I could be nice and blissed out for the procedure, the Vascular Surgeon of Steel just stabbed me in the groin with a giant needle.(1) Then he threaded an arterial catheter into my femoral artery.(2) Feh! Meanwhile, his assistant stabbed me in the left wrist and inserted an arterial line and two(!) IV's.(3) Vascular people are a bit crazy with needles.
The Vascular Surgeon of Steel threaded the arterial catheter all the way up past my heart, occasionally releasing dye along the way. The dye would give me a hot feeling wherever it was released and also, (are you ready for this?) in my butt. Very odd.
Then I felt heat on the left side of my face. "Wait a minute, Bub," I said, "do you have dyslexia or something? We're supposed to be doin' stuff on the right side." And he said, "yeah, well, the joke's on you. Before I'm going right, I'm checking out the left internal carotid artery to make sure it's wide open. That's because I'm going to blow up a little balloon that will block your right internal carotid artery, because they may end up 'sacrificing' the right internal carotid artery to take off the tumor that's coating it. They need to know if you can live with just one internal carotid artery." (WHAT????) (4)
And I said, "huh? I didn't hear any of that." (Alright, that part's a lie. Otherwise, I couldn't tell you the story. Everything else is verbatim.)
Anyway, the left internal carotid artery was fine. So, he withdrew the catheter a little and ran it up into my right internal carotid artery and blew up the balloon. I could actually hear it, but I didn't feel any different. They did a little neurological exam, having me wiggle my fingers and toes, etc. I was getting by just fine with one internal carotid artery! They tested it further by lowering my blood pressure, and I still rocked!(5) So, there it was. If they needed of take out my right carotid artery to remove tumor, they could without causing me any grief at all.
They never did do that neat trick where they would clog the little arteries supplying the tumor. I haven't discussed it with them, but I think it's because so much of the tumor was supplied almost directly by the carotid artery, it was a whole different ballgame.
After that, I hung out in the recovery room and was eventually wheeled up to the Vascular Intensive Care Unit, which seemed excessive, since I still felt pretty good, if over-stabbed. I got my very own room with a hide-a-toilet that pulled out of a cabinet. (Imagine how cool that would be in the home!)
(Skip this paragraph if you're not into oversharing) Speaking of toilets, remember the assistant to the Surgeon of Steel who gave me the arterial line in my left wrist and the two IV's? Well, one of the IV's was on the back of my right hand with a loop of tubing that went out to the tips of my fingers. I'm a righty, and my left hand was out of commission from the arterial line anyway. How the smell was I supposed to, um, clean myself after, um, ya know, with that stupid tube? So I thought that Nurse Andrew might have to, um, help out, which I did not relish at all. (No offense to him.) Luckily, we did figure out a way around all of that, and my dignity was left intact.
Once again, I didn't sleep too well, but I got to hang out and trade war stories with Nurse Andrew and Resident Inia, which was fun.
THE DAY OF!
Finally, it was November 6, the day of the big operation. As per protocol, they talked to me about the possible risks: "you may lose the ability to control your right eye, you might become a jibbering idiot, you might vegetabilize," yaddah, yaddah, yaddah, same old, same old.(6) Of course, I signed. What was I going to do at that point?
I don't remember much after that for a while, which is just as well. When I woke up, I was in the recovery room, recovering as one does. They had taken out a big chunk of tumor from behind my nose, so I was breathing better than I had in months, and they cleaned out all of that dead crud that had been giving me infections and rancid breath for years. Even with all that cutting, they did not need to make the tissue patch the ENT Surgeon of Steel originally had planned.
They elected to leave my tumor-coated right carotid artery alone because they had found a concentration of the oddity dense enough to identify the culprit.
**And, drum roll, please, the answer, based on the frozen section, is....cancer!(7) Yes, a grand slam for oncology, a hard-fought win after a grueling pennant series!(8)**
They tell me that the little fella is a squamous cell carcinoma. You can find squamous cell carcinomas (SCC) in all sorts of places, but, most famously, on the skin. SCC is usually viciously aggressive, growing and spreading fast if not stopped early. But my squamous cell carcinoma seems to be nice and pokey, at least so far. Although it has grown into too many awkward places for a surgeon to remove it all, there seems to be time to search for a treatment, maybe even cure, and there have been some amazing breakthroughs in immunotherapy just in the last few years. It's going to be a tough Tumoriffic Series, but I'm putting my bets on the Oncology Geeks to win the championship.
Weird as it is, I am actually relieved, because I finally know what this awful thing inside my head is. There have been some fun times, but, mostly, it's nerve-wracking to not know what that sort of thing is and to go back and forth between specialists like a ping pong ball.
After the Surgery
It had been a pretty quick surgery. The Surgeons of Steel were "faster than a speeding bullet." I was out in under 4 hours, with only about an hour and a 1/2 of that being actual surgery time, which is great. We were expecting six+ hours. It's making my recovery much easier.
I spent the night in the Post-Operative Unit. Nursing Assistant Ashley was brilliant and funny and will be going to nursing school soon.
Then, strangely, as if it had all been a dream, I left the hospital and returned to the Oaklander the next day, on November 7.
And, today, on November 8, here I am typing in the hotel bed. My energy is on and off again. K/BWE, my parents, and I visited the Magnate of Steel Natural History Museum this morning, as I have wanted to do for years. I think it's the best I have ever seen. Dr. Dad pushed me around in a wheelchair because walking tires me out easily, but I expect I'll be up for hiking next week.
We fly home tomorrow.
Next, 'the Search for Spock'
No. No. That's not what is next. What's next is the search for an oncologist. We have a couple in mind right in our home town, where some of the world's leading experts on squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck are to be found.
Will the treatment allow me to go back to work, and if so, when? Find out as the Tumoriffic Series commences soon!
(1) The reason they didn't make me nice and woozy for the angiogram was that they needed to do neurological examinations while it was happening. I had to be awake for those.
(2) Although females do have femoral arteries, there is nothing particularly feminine about them. Everyone has one in each leg. The root of their name is the same as the giant leg bone next to which they run, the femur. Why they aren't spelled 'femural,' I can't tell you.
(3) An arterial line is a vascular catheter like an intravenous (IV) line, but, as the name implies, it's in the artery. Mine was in my left wrist, just upstream from the thumb. That's the usual place. Definitely hurts to get one, so it's not my favorite, but I have put some other people, so it's only justice that I got one, too.
(4) As you may have guessed or known already, my carotid arteries have always been some of my favorite arteries. The 2 external carotid arteries supply important stuff like the face and the voicebox, but the 2 internal carotid arteries are even more special. They supply the brain. They're not the only suppliers. There is a big hub up there called the Circle of Willis ("What you talkin' 'bout, Willis???") where a whole bunch of other arteries plug in and can help out if one of the others is hurting. However, the system isn't perfect, so they had to make sure.
(5) I am extremely proud of this. How many people can say they can survive with just one internal carotid artery!
(6) I just made up the term 'vegetabilize!' You read it here first!
(7) A frozen section is a quick way to examine tissue from a surgical biopsy. The tissue is quickly sent to the pathology lab, the pathologists, rubbing their hands greedily, drop it in liquid nitrogen. It freezes solid so they can slice it nice and thin like luncheon meat, and they can look at it through the microscope. It doesn't tell them everything (That takes days or weeks), but it often tells them enough to make a general diagnosis, like they did with me.
(8) The surgeons also did me another big favor: they cleaned out all that radiation-killed, foul-smelling tissue that had been giving me infections and rancid breath for years. This is a huge quality of life issue. I am very grateful!
A Different Kind of Pole Dancing!
Here, I am exhibiting the essential supplies for any good trip to the hospital. I am serious. They will dress you only in those stupid gowns which are uncomfortable and humiliating. Bring your own bathrobe, sweatpants, warm socks, and slippers, and your hospital stay will be much more pleasant. The Navy surplus hat is optional.
... or why isn't the thigh bone spelled femor? It would be pronounced the same.
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