Tuesday evening, after my night class, Cheryl and I jumped into the truck and headed out for our standard 3.5 hour drive to Houston. We had a bit of a hassle getting started due to a semi that decided to spin out on the I-35 parking lot (he probably did not see all the cars stopped as usual) and the mess he caused filled up more of the parking lot with fire trucks and about a dozen police cars, and blocked all the ramps to the Interstate. So we had to find an alternate route and made our way East!
We are getting used to this trip, and it hardly seemed that long. The only hitch was that the place we normally stop, a gas station with a bakery that makes delicious cinnamon buns was closed when we went by! Phooey.
Anyway, we made it to our new favorite La Quinta, whose rooms all seem to be suites, and got settled in just about in time to watch a bit of HGTV (I would have thought Cheryl would have gotten over this fascination with rebuilding houses after our Kansas City adventure, but that has not happened. I wonder where the next rebuild will be!)
Morning Prep work
Wednesday morning, we had an appointment with Dr. Yu, the plastic surgeon who is doing my work, and his assistant, Dr. Brooke Schweitzer, a UNL graduate who Cheryl really likes, and not just for the Nebraska connection. Wonder of Wonders, they walked into the room exactly on time! That has happened maybe twice in all of our visits there. (My list of doctors now is well over 30, including the ten or so listed on my system at M.D. Anderson!) Brooke and Cheryl commiserated on the Cornhusker's dismal performance last Saturday, while Dr. Yu and I focused on business!
Dr. Yu stared at my face once again and considered where he would cut-and-paste, and what he thought he could do to pull up my drooping mouth on that left side. He finally decided to not cut on my leg this time, and thought he could pull things up by moving skin around. That was a nice thing to hear. It gives the farm on my leg time for a new crop to grow in case we need it later.
He took out a sharpie and proceeded to scribble on my face showing where he wanted to work. He wrote a big "yes" on that side, leaving me to wonder why he did not write "no" on the right side. I have heard enough stories of doctors accidentally doing surgery on the wrong body parts, and I am sure this is just a way to remind him what he is going to do, as if it was not obvious enough. The sharpie may wear off eventually, but for now it is just my tattoo.
After we left Dr Yu, we stopped in for a bit of breakfast before our next appointment, then headed over to the Anesthesiology Department to talk over the sleep side of the surgery. I had to answer about a bazillion questions about any problems either I or members of my family had ever had with that, all of which were negative, so he was happy that this would go well. (It always has in my previous surgeries). He did check to see how far I could open my mouth, and if I could tilt my head back far enough to get the airway stuff down, and seemed satisfied with that as well. All of that has been an issue in the past, before they disconnected the left side of my lower jaw, and I could not open it more than about a half-inch, but things are fine now (except for my lower jaw swinging from side to side when I brush my teeth, weird!)
I did remind him that the left side of my lower jaw is free floating now, and I did not want them doing anything to damage that area. He made a note of that and we were done for the morning!
Feeding time
I just knew we would not get out of there without feeding the vampires, and sure enough, the anesthesiologist wanted to see more current blood numbers, and ordered up some tests. So, we headed down to the blood center and waited a bit for the event.
I noticed something disturbing in that room. Instead of magazines, they had a rack of pocket-books you could read. I hope that is not a sign of how long you could end up waiting there. (It turns out they have a check-out system for folks who will be in the center a while, and a lot are, so they can read books while they wait through procedures!) We have had a few long waits, but not long enough to read an entire book!
The vampire feeding went pretty well, but the nurse had to push the needle in twice, and it did hurt n the second push. Oh well, I am getting used to all of this! Once she had enoug blood, we were done for the day.
Shopping
They have built a new Microcenter in Houston, and that is my new favorite toy-store, full of computers and gadgets I use in my computer architecture classes. So, we went shopping there for a while. I lusted over a 28-inch Samsung monitor with 4000 dots across the sceen, and a new iMac with over 5000 dots across the screen. Both of these monitors are incredible to look at, even with only one eye, and I will have to have one eventually! Big screen TVs are moving in ths direction as well, so we will have to throw out all our old TVs and computer monitors in a few years, I suppose!
In the end, all I did was buy enough microcontroller boards to build up lab kits for the two computer architecture sections I am teaching each term now. I let the students play with my equipment rather than fight through the school procurement system to buy them, and then I get to decide what to do with them, and don't have to deal with any other bureaucracy. The students get a kick out of this part of my class, as many of them have never even touched a piece of electronic equipment, except for their iPhones, of course! Quite a few get hooked enough to go off an buy their own equipment as well!
Next, we hit the grocery store to stock up on food for a couple of nights, and enough Ensure to get me through the visit as well. We were pretty sure I would not be eating much after the surgery.
We went back to the motel, and settled in to do a bit of work, and get ready for the big day.
Surgery Day
Thursday Morning, we had to report at nine AM, so we had time for Cheryl to get something to eat. I was not allowed to eat or drink anything after midnight the evening before so I just watched the (depressing) news on TV until it was time to get ready. Why do people live in Buffalo, NY? Five feet of snow? Yuck!
We drove over to M. D. Anderson and found the parking lot pretty full. We ended up on level 7 which is near the top of the place. Then we said a prayer in the car (something we always do before going in) and walked our way down the far-too-familiar corridors to the surgery check in area. The place was full! Even with signs limiting the number of family visitors to four per patient, some families seemed to have invited neighbors in as well.
Cheryl noted that most of the folks in the room were on their cell phones, all checking email, or playing games, I suppose, since no one was talking. A few had tablets as well. No one seems to read much anymore, which was fine since we did not see any magazines anywhere, and we failed to check out any of the books.
They called us back in about an hour after we got there, and went into a private room to get ready. They made me put on that silly BHO (Butt-hanging-out) gown and put on an ID band on every appendage they could find! Then they made me tell them what was on the bands. Cute, I guess they can't read. (Actually, they told us to bring in a photo ID, but no one asked to see that. I guess they were sure I was me!
Dr. Schweitzer popped in to say hello, and I had to comment that someone had stolen her hair. She has a lot of nice blond hair, and managed to stuff it all under her surgical hat. I was surprised she managed to do that, and she said folks do not recognize her in her "scrubs".
Then a nurse came in and asked about 20 questions, all of which were on a form I filled out while we were waiting to check in. That was kind of silly, but when the second nurse came in and asked the same set of 20 questions, I go into the rhythm. When the anesthesiologist started asking the same ones, I rattled off the answers before he could ask them! HA!
While we were waiting for folks to come in, I notice the PC in the room had my record on it and Dr. Schweitzer had started it off with "A pleasant man with a medical history indicated above". Well, I guess I made some kind of impression with my attitude about all of this. Good, that is what I hope to do on each visit. No Gloom and Doom will be in my mind while here, no matter what!
Everyone kept asking what I was there for. I told them they were going to make me look like Robert Redford (but that did not happen). Then I told them they were going to take my leg out of my face! (I always thought it was amusing that they said they were going to "borrow" tissue from my leg to fill in the void on my face. Did they put it back when they were done? Heck no!)
The anesthesiologist was the one who put in the IV. I hate that part, but LIDOCAINE IS GOOD! A slight sting as they pump that in and the IV goes in smooth as silk. No fuss at all. My new mantra: No Licocaine, no IV! Once I was wired up, they started making plans to move me to surgery, and he gave me my first shot of night-night- stuff. He told me that if his "cocktail" did not work, he had a hammer in his kit. Cute!
I remember the bed being wheeled out of the room with Cheryl walking behind me. I was "talking up a storm" according to Cheryl, and they must have pumped me full of more nappy-time juice to shut me up, because that was the last thing I remember.
Wakey-Wakey
Next thing I remember is opening my eye(!) and looking out at what I thought was the same door I had gone out of earlier. But that door was actually a window with a big building in view, something that took a few minutes to register. We were in a different room on a different floor in the recovery area (which spans three floors, they said). Cheryl was there and apparently about three hours had passed and it was all over.
As I was staring at the building in the window, the nurse lowered the bed, and the building shrank as well. That seemed odd, so my engineering brain kicked in and analyze that event. Let's see, if the bed goes down, my line of sight to the top of the building goes down as well. Looking at the window ledge, I see less of the building, so it shrinks. Yep, that all makes sense, so my engineering brain is intact. I must be OK!
I was pretty groggy from all those wonderful drugs they shoot into you during these events, so waking up took a bit of time. Far too soon, they suggested that I sit up and try to get dressed. With help from Cheryl, I managed to get into my sweat clothes, brought just in case they messed with my leg. I got all the tubes extracted from my body and I was loose!
Next thing I know, a lady with a wheel chair rolled me down the hall, with Cheryl right behind, and we were off to the pharmacy on the 10th floor to get my pain medicines, then she wheeled me to the garage elevator. Cheryl and I walked to the truck and headed back to the motel.
An Evening's Rest
We are settled in for the night now, and will head back to Austin early tomorrow morning. Actually, Cheryl is sound asleep, while I am wide awake writing this tale. It is 2AM, but I cannot sleep, probably since I slept most of the day. So far, I have not had much pain, which is good, and Cheryl says I look "great". They did not put on any bandages, so everything is exposed and will stay that way while things heal.
They did remove a bunch of the excess tissue below where my left eye used to be, but the patch is just as big as before, it just seems thinner and blends in better with the rest of my face. They may have managed to fill in a dent where skull-bone used to be as well. I think it looks like a mess, but it is still swollen from the surgery, and has a bunch of stitches that will be removed in a week. Based on what happened with my previous patch, this one will tan up and look a lot less obvious. Add the planned artificial eye and I may look tolerable enough, all things considered. The eye work has to wait at least two weeks, and we will probably end up doing that in January. Cheryl thinks the final results will look pretty good, and we both hope so!
They originally told us that we would need to come back to Houston in a week for a follow up, but now the plan is for my doctor in Austin, probably Dr. Scholl, to check things out and pull the stitches out. We may do that right before we head to KC for Thanksgiving, or right after we get back.
Cheryl took before and after pictures of my face, and I will post them in my next message, probably after I get used to my new look a bit more.
Prayers Work
We had a ton of folks praying for us as this all happened, and we thank all of you once again. Prayers do work, and we have proof in all of the successes we have had here at M.D. Anderson. They managed to pull off a miracle and keep me going when things looked pretty bad back in Austin. God sent us on this journey, and has been with us the whole way. Thanks to Him, and all of you, we are still here, writing this silly blog, and hoping it will help some other soul and their family get through their battle with cancer.
By the way, M. D. Anderson set a new record today, they had 84 surgeries, about 10 above their previous record. The nurses were all a bit frazzled! The fact that they can handle that many folks is amazing, but the fact that there are so many suffering with cancer is pretty sad! May that never happen to you or any one you love!
Maybe I can sleep now, with my story safely in print.
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