It has been two weeks since modification v5.0, and we are back at M.D. Anderson for tests and follow-up visits with Dr. Yu, the plastic Surgeon.
We found out Monday evening that we had a 1PM Tuesday appointment to have a "Modified Barium Swallow" test, so we had to hustle over to Houston this morning. We made it in record time: 2:45, made possible by missing rush hour in both cities! This time, cousin Bill from Wyoming came along to help out and kibitz (he is good at that! Must come from living in the "wild west").
On this visit, I had to use a wheelchair, as walking through this place was going to be more than my leg could handle. Good thing Bill was with us, otherwise Cheryl would have not made it!
Swallow Test
The swallow test is needed to make sure I can eat sufficiently well that they can remove the feeding tube and I can go back to normal earth-man eating practices. It was messy, to say the least.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Black. I remember you! We met when you were in the hospital. I remember you were fun!" This happens a lot. I seem to leave an impression on folks (good, I hope) who help us along on our path. Sarah is a technician who administers the swallow test, then they ship you to another doctor trained in interpreting the results. I did remember Sarah stopping by, but she was one of a stream of folks checking in while I was in recovery right after surgery!
The test involved drinking a variety of barium laced liquids, each with a different consistency. Each time I was given a cup of the ugly fluid, I would try to get it in my mouth, keep it there and avoid drooling the liquid all over my shirt, then swallow it while an X-Ray machine imaged my swallow mechanism.
Spoiler Alert! I drooled more than I swallowed, and soaked both the "BHO" gown they gave me, and my civilian shirt I left on underneath. The "flap" Dr. Yu added to my mouth to cover part of the new jawbone kept my mouth open a bit, making it very difficult to keep that stuff in place. Still, I tried to avoid slobbering too much!
That barium stuff tastes like chalk, and is really hard to wipe off when you do spill some. I went through about a dozen different thicknesses of fluid, and tried a number of techniques for getting the stuff down before we were done. They filmed the entire thing! (And I thought hospital TV was bad!)
"I are a mess! Don't I look good?" I said to another technician who came in to help me clean up.
"Don't answer that!" (They both giggled!)
I cleaned up, thanked everyone for letting me have so much fun, suggested some improved flavoring options for that stuff, and we headed out of the imaging area.
World Premier
Next stop was up on the tenth floor in the "Head and Neck" area. This is where Leila Little (Speech Pathologist) met with Cheryl and I to watch our movies. It is mildly is strange video, looking like something you might see in some silly commercial where something flows past a tongue, past an epiglottis flap designed to route stuff between stomach and lungs, around a voice box, and hopefully down an esophagus and not an airway. (Try to spell all of those words correctly when the last time you even saw them was in high school biology!)
Wait! All of that weird stuff was in my neck! Most of it worked reasonably well, but some did not. My epiglottis has been damaged by radiation, so it does not "flap" quite right, and some stuff leaks into my airway (thankfully, not much), some gets stuck part way down and needs to be worked on to swallow, and some works just fine.
In the end, we managed to come up with some consistencies I could handle. I will keep the feeding tube for a couple more weeks, then they will pull it out. In the meantime, I am to start working on eating and drinking some amount of "real" food, so I can stop eating through the tube. Basically, I am back where I was two years ago, and will be eating baby food and Ensure part of the time, and eating more of that "gravity" stuff the rest of the time.
Migraines
We had one more issue to deal with before we left for the day. I have been fighting a migraine headache for over a day, and my vision has tunneled down to where working on the blog is very hard, since I cannot see the keyboard that well. I have lived with this problem since my college days, but have not had one in quite a while. I did a fair amount of walking yesterday, and that might have triggered it.
In the past , one drug could stop one of these headaches cold, if I felt it coming on and hit it right away. That drug was Excedrin. I have some, but they told me to stay off of aspirin following surgery, since it acts as a blood thinner, and could start bleeding. So we let it go for several hours, and things got bad. My head hurt and my vision started closing down.
When I was in college, such an attack could keep me in bed for a couple of days. We tied a half dose of Excedrin to see if it would help, but things had set in too far, and that did not help much.
Funny thing about migraines. They are hereditary. I was having one one time while talking to my mom on the phone. I described my vision problems, and she was excited to hear about that!
"I have been having the same problem my whole life, but I was scared to say anything about it. I thought it might be a brain tumor!"
I was glad she finally figured out she was fine. Lots of folks have this problem.
"Besides," she said, "I like having a headache. It proves there is something up there to hurt!"
Maybe I got part of my sense of humor from my mom!
Leila called Dr. Yu's PA, Brooke, to see if she had any ideas. Brooke told us to go ahead and take Excedrin, as we are far enough past surgery that it should not matter.
So, we left for the day and headed to our standard La Quinta for the night. The next appointment is at 8:45 with Dr Yu and a staple remover. Not looking forward to that!
BTW. I took the Excedrin, but am still dealing with vision issues. Hopefully we will figure that out soon.
Staple Removal
We all settled in early last night, after Bill and Cheryl had a nice dinner out, and I laid in bed trying to will my migraine away.
This morning, we packed everything up, and loaded all the stuff (and me) in the car and headed off for our appointment.
This time, we had to walk/ride across the main building, then ride the tram to Dr. Yu's building. We got to the "Center for Reconstructive Surgery" right on time.
We barely had time for Cheryl to visit with her fishys before we were called in.
I had to change into one of those classic "BHO" gowns for this visit. They had a lot of "me" to inspect!
The door opened in a few minutes, and Dr. Yu's PA, Brooke, walked in. She and Cheryl shared a few Nebraska stories (seems to be a requirement when two "Huskers" get together), then she turned her attention to me and all the "stuff" I was still wearing.
Brooke started off by pealing off the bandage covering the "doner" area on my left leg. That was a bit uncomfortable, but it came off with no issues, and she was happy with the way things were healing.
Next, Brooke started working on the drain tube they left in my neck after surgery. That tube drained into a plastic bulb, and keeping the tube and bulb clean was a chore. She pulled the tube out, and also pulled out the sensor used by that Doppler gadget they used to check blood flow in my new "flap". All of that went smoothly with little pain.
Out with the staples
Then she switched gears and started getting ready for the staple pulling part!
"I am not looking forward to this" I told her. "Pulling staples from my leg was a PAIN!". Those leg staples were pretty big and strong, so it took some painful effort to get them out.
"This will not be bad. These staples are very small. In fact it should not hurt unless I grab a facial hair and pull that out."
Yeah, right, Doc, thought I.
Know what? She was right. I barely felt her pull any of them out, and there were around 35 of them to get rid of.
Once all that metal was gone, Cheryl asked about shaving (I was starting to look like Santa) and Brooke told her it was OK if we used an electric shaver and stayed away from anything else. So we will try shaving in a day or two.
Next, Brooke pealed off the bandage covering my Trache, and declared that looking nice as well. She replaced that bandage with a smaller one!
Then she was done! No pain (well, very little). Brooke left to get Dr. Yu.
Dr. Yu's assessment.
Dr Yu came in shortly followed by a visiting student from Beijing. He inspected all of his work, and said he was quite pleased at how good everything looked. He even talked about trimming the flap down and adding some "fat" to fill in areas on my left side where bone was removed. He said he could make me look much better with that! Great (even if it really is not needed, I already look great, as everyone tells me!)
Dr Yu gave his student a rundown on my surgery, and the student was quite pleased when I told him I had visited China, and his home town of Beijing back in 1998 or so.
We worked out when our next visit was going to be, then the doctor left.
Wrapping Up
After Dr. Yu had left, Brook told us that the surgical team was pretty amazed at the shape my legs were in when I got to surgery. I was a long term runner, so I had so much muscle, they had no problem doing their work. Brooke told us most of their patients, especially those my age, have little muscle to work with, so this was great. She also told us she was running her first half-marathon in Austin in a few weeks. (Go girl!)
Brooke had one more duty. She worked with Cheryl to show her how to bandage my leg, which will be necessary for a few more weeks.
We talked about my migraine, which is not as bad, but still hanging on, so she recommended I see my ophthalmologist back in Austin. It is getting a bit better, but I will probably do that anyway, just to be safe.
Party Time
Before we left, we talked to Brooke about throwing a pizza party for the staff in the recovery unit where I spent the week after surgery. She was delighted with the idea. Those folks work hard, and do not hear good things from their patients very often. Most of them are too happy escaping to remember to do that. We will work up a card, and get a gift certificate and fund a party for the nurses and all the staff involved in that area, and get that to Brooke on our next visit. We did this back in Austin, twice before, and both Cheryl and I were pleased that the idea went over well.
We headed out after being there for barely an hour! Bill and Cheryl had breakfast in the Waterfall Café, and we headed for the car.
Eating and Driving
I needed to be fed, but we really had no time to do that in the hospital, so we decided to stop at the "Un-General General Store" near Columbus, Texas, so Bill could see this amazing collection of "stuff". When we got there Cheryl wired up the gravity bag to the hand grab on the passenger side where I was sitting. She got me connected, then I had to explain to her that my head had to be lower than the bag for this to work! She did not really understand why. That was no surprise. Few accountants learn much about hydraulics, but all aerospace engineers do!.
I reclined the front seat fully back so we could get a flow going, and things started working. Cheryl and Bill went into the store to spend some money, and I laid there getting fed. I was not done when they finished shopping, so I basically just ate/dozed my way all the way home.
We were home around 3pm. Not bad.
A good visit
This visit went exceedingly well. All the procedures went off with no problems, and I seem to be recovering nicely. No doubt that is because we are being watched over by a bunch of great folks, and our God! Once again, we have to tank all of you for the support (even if Cheryl is on her email almost constantly during these trips!)
We have nothing to do but heal for a couple of weeks, then we go back to reassess the swallowing. Hopefully, the last tube goes away then!
Comments
There are no comments yet.