Radiation: Am I glowing in the dark yet?

Wow! It has been three months since I last wrote anything about how I am feeling. Sorry for the lapse in updates. Things are going pretty well now, but tomorrow is the critical PET scan that will tell us if the cancer is gone. So, Cheryl and I are both a bit anxious! We certainly need your prayers for the next few days while we wait for the results.

Since my last posting, I worked my way through the teaching of a single course during the Summer session. My schedule was great, leaving me a lot of time to just rest and heal. There was not much pain, but my throat was still sore and my mouth muscles had been hit pretty hard by the last rounds of radiation, so I could not open my mouth much at all. For all of those reasons, I pretty much lived on Ensure for most of the summer. I also got off of the pain patches. The doctors worry that you might get addicted to those things, so we switched to a "golden elixir" (some kind of liquid) that worked just fine. I eventually got to the point where I just took it to help me sleep and now am pretty much off everything.

Cheryl managed to get up to Kansas City to see our grandson, Colin, in June. He is sure growing fast:

I still have not seen him, but we hope to take a trip up there as soon as we can.

The semester ended the last week in July and August 1 was our tenth wedding anniversary. I had long wanted to do something special for that occasion, so Cheryl and I started planning a trip for the break after Summer session. Originally I wanted to do a week-long cruise out of Rome, but by the time we figured out how much everything would cost, the trip got way too expensive. We really needed a break - I had not been out of Austin pretty much since this whole adventure started!

So, we settled for a week of suffering in paradise and went to Kawai'i, the garden island in Hawaii.

Boy was that hard to take. We both had to figure out how to relax and enjoy the incredible scenery. We took a helicopter ride over the entire island.

We spent a lot of time on the Na Pali coast which is unreachable except by sea (or helicopter).

We we took a dinner, sunset cruise along that coast on a catamaran as well.

For our anniversary dinner we went to a huge Luau on the beach and watched the sun set to the music of Hawaiian dancers.

(Did you know that originally only men did the hula?) I even bought Cheryl an official tenth anniversary diamond present, a neat little diamond studded sandal on a chain necklace that she loves!

I even managed to eat solid food the whole trip. It had to be thin to get past my teeth, but we managed just fine. All in all, the trip was a huge success, enough so that we really want to go back - NOW!

The last medical adventure we have gone through involves getting my mouth to open up enough to eat normally. My surgeon gave me a torture device designed to stretch the muscles and make the jaw open, but that was too painful when I started, and by the time I really wanted to work on the problem, I could not fit it in my mouth at all. So, I started going to a physical therapist (let's see that is about 15 people involved in my treatments!) After ten sessions, we were no further along than I was when we started, so the therapist recommended that we do a procedure where they put me out, and force the mouth open and hold it there long enough for it to "take". Then we go back to therapy and work to keep it open.

I asked if it would hurt, and the doctor said no, it would not hurt him at all (I wanted to hit him!) Actually, no it would not hurt since he said I would be under "Milk of Amnesia" the whole time.

When I went to the oral surgeon (Doctor 3) he looked things over and proposed doing a major (and risky) procedure where they will cut part of the muscles lose and trim the top of my lower jawbone on both sides. There is a risk that I could get nerve damage out of this, and that it might actually make things worse as it all heals up. Boy is that not encouraging!

So, at present, we are talking to other people and getting more opinions. In the meantime I have gone back to my own treatments - using a stack of Popsicle sticks to force my mouth open a little bit at a time. It seems to be helping.

Tomorrow morning we go for the PET scan that will tell us if there are any cancer cells lingering in the area. We are praying for a good result! We see the surgeon on Tuesday and the Chemo doctor on Friday, so this week is going to be pretty tense as we wait for answers. We both have confidence in the team God has assembled for us, and we have your support to draw strength from as well. I will post the results as soon as we know something new.

Thanks again for being with us in all of this.