Three Months and Counting

Vampire Feeding

We started off the day with their favorite pastime, stealing blood! The vampires - er - technicians who do this are very busy in the morning. The place was packed when we got there, but the wait was not so long. I recognized the lady who did the work today, and I swear I never even felt her stab me with that rusty 10-penny nail they use. She did great, and I was out of there in just a couple of minutes.

Great start on a tough day.

CT Scan

The next stop was the big test in the diagnostic imaging lab where they do the CT scan. Once again, the wait was fairly short. I left Cheryl in the lobby while I went back into the huge area where they must have a dozen CT machines. A group of about six of us were led back into the changing area, where we put on those silly hospital tops that have no back, then they sat us down to get an IV. The tech who did this one was not quite as good as the previous one, but she got the IV in with little fuss (from me). Then she sent me back out to the lobby all wired up with tubes, and I got to sit for a while until they were ready for the real work.

The actual test requires a saline solution prep that takes about a half an hour to get in, then they take you to your "machine" (That great donut you ride through!). I got laid down and they wired me up to the "contrast" fluid they would use to help visualize the inner workings of my head and neck.

The technician left the room and the machine started feeding me through the hole. Then they stopped the motion and fired up the contrast pump. Boy, having that flow through your system is weird. There is a warm feeling that flows through you are the contrast is pumped into your arm. I feel it the most in my groin, then it works its way up to my head and neck area, which eventually gets warm as well. My big problem with this stuff is that it almost seems to bubble up when they actually run you through the machine. I almost want to throw up. In the end, all I did was salivate a bunch, and get very queasy, but I got through the ride as usual, with no messes to clean up.

The whole (hole?) ordeal took about 90 minutes and we were done.

Opthalmology

After the scan, we headed up to the Opthalmology department to meet with the folks who build artificial eyes. This was unexpected, fascinating, and a bit weird all at the same time.

I will not be able to have a glass eye insert, since apparently, I do not have eyelids anymore. They went away during surgery. Why, I have no clue. So, I will retain the skin patch that is now covering that area, and is sewed to what I thought was my upper eyelid. Anyway, there is a fairly deep depression where the eye used to live and that will stay. The plastic surgeon will reduce the bulk of all that new skin soon, but I will look pretty much the same after that. I could just continue with my pirate look, and keep the eyepatch, or go for a more normal look.

Their plan for the eye is a sculpted chunk of rubber with a glass eye complete with eyebrows and eye lashes. They mold that so it fits in the depression, then they glue it to your skin. They might even add small magnets to make sure the eye is placed in the exact right spot each time you glue it in! The coloring is so close, you have to look closely to see the joint. The only problem is that the eye is fixed, and does not blink. Also, you have to remove it each day and re-glue it the next day. The eye is very realistic, and for folks like me, who wear glasses, the overall effect is pretty good unless you look at someone at an angle. Then it is obvious that one eye is "wrong".

Medicare will pay for one of these each year, and that is about how long they last if worn every day.

Dr. Lai

Our appointment with Dr. Lai was at 12:30, and we got there a little early. We sat, and sat some more, and then - we got to sit even more! He is pretty busy, and often gets delayed when a surgery goes longer than expected. We had a second appointment with my oncologist, Dr. Keis, at 1:30, and since we had not yet seen Dr. Lai by that time, I went over to the desk to start letting everyone know we would be late to future appointments. They are used to all of this, and checked in the back rooms where the doctors really hide. As it turned out, we were next to see Dr. Lai, so we went back to waiting.

Finally, they called me back in to steal a few of those "vitals" I keep handy, and, at long last, took us into the room to wait for the doctor. After a few minutes, another resident on his staff, who we had not met before, came in and started telling us that the preliminary look at the CT was good. PHEW! Still, Dr. Lai would look things over and tell us more soon.

The resident fired up the PC in the room and showed us what the CT scan has produced. (I was surprised we were seeing anything from the scan so soon.) All of this was "preliminary" since more skilled readers will look things over later. Still, he dialed his way through my body, stopping in the areas where the cancer (any my eye) had been and showed up a bunch of things that made little sense to us. It was obvious that a lot of stuff was missing from my left side, like bone and other tissue that was still there on the right side. He even dialed up the scans from just before the surgery to compare things. It was very interesting, but I doubt that I could even tell the difference between normal tissue and cancer.

Finally, the resident looked over my nose sore, and decided that the sore did need looking at more closely. He was fairly sure Dr. Lai would want a biopsy of that, which is what we wanted anyway.

The resident left to confer with Dr. Lai, and came back in to confirm that we were going to do the biopsy. That procedure was not too exciting. They gave me a quick shot of Lidocane to numb the area, and he snipped off two small chunks of my upper lip near my nose sore. They did not want to cut into the nose cartilage, so the lip skin got the call to duty. After all of that, they taped up the cut and then Dr. Lai came in!

Dr. Lai told us that he and another radiologist had looked over the CT scan and he was very pleased with the results. There was no sign that anything was growing anywhere in the area. He did see a slight growth in the size of a lymph-node in my neck, and he was going to see about getting a closer look at that. Even with that news, this was a huge weight off both Cheryl and my minds!

Dr. Lai thought that the issue with my nose was unrelated to the cancer we were treating. It might be another form of cancer, though, so they were going to check it out. I have been told in the past that I actually have a higher risk of coming down with cancer from the tests I have been having, and the treatments, than from the actual original cancer recurring. Maybe this nose issue is a byproduct of those tests, or all the radiation, or just a sore that is very slow to heal. We will find out when the biopsy results come in, probably on Monday.

Effectively, Dr. Lai cleared me for another three months before we check more. The lymph node check is just a precaution, and that node has been mentioned before, so we were not that concerned about it.

We left Dr. Lai feeling much better. Today was going well.

Oncology

We made it to our appointment with Dr. Keis about 90 minutes late, and saw his assistant anyway. She checked my all too brittle fingernails, which are going to take a while to recover from all the chemo. The only thing they were concerned with today, was making sure my kidneys were working well after the chemo. Unfortunately, That first vampire had not taken enough blood to check that, so I got scheduled for an afternoon feeding! Great!

With no other issues to discuss, they cleared me as well! More good news!

Final Feedings

We ended the day with another blood letting session to check kidney functions. As before that went well, and I hardly felt the needle. Maybe I am getting used to all of this.

We sat around after this session to figure out if we had to stick around another day. The first available appointment for an ultrasound test was Sept 24, but Dr. Lai told then to "make room tomorrow!" and they did. We found out that we had an appointment for prep work at 7:30 Friday morning, then the ultrasound test at 8:00am.

Shopping at Target

A much relieved pair of Austinites went back to the motel to regroup We had checked out this morning, but got checked back in with no problem. However, we were both pretty exhausted from all the visits today, so we went to Microcenter for a few minutes (I needed a tech fix to get over everything), then we went across the street to the local Target to see if we could find something for dinner. We bought more Ensure, but there was no baby-food anywhere we could find in that place. Cheryl got a nice TV dinner. Oh, and we bought Ice Cream to celebrate!

We ended the day after dinner by crashing on the comfy bed. We were both pretty much out like a light from a busy day!