Its been a busy year
I can’t believe that I haven’t touched this since last August. Geez, a lot has happened. So, I’m going to give a sum up of the last year and catch you up on what has been going on around here.
Okay, So, last fall I got busy with Tadpole going to preschool and getting myself into the bridal shows. I almost lost the DJ business until Angels were sent to save me. I cannot begin to thank Robert and Moira for all they have done for my family. I got into most of the bridal shows that I wanted to do and they were very successful.
While I was working the bridal shows I had noticed that a lump I’ve had in the back of my mouth since I was a kid had changed from small and normal to long and red. When I had the doctors check it out it turned out to be Epidermoid Carcinoma. Mouth cancer. Really? I asked God. I”m working my DJ business like you told me to do. To fight for it and you give me this?!! Now?!! I was stunned.
Turned out that bump had been an engorged saliva gland. It went bad. My type of cancer is very rare and tends to peak for the 20 – 40 year old set. One that doesn’t’ respond to chemo or radiation so it was under the knife for me. Now I was told they would have to cut out the area surrounding where the tumor had been for a cancer biopsy and then they would take a flap of skin from my arm, including the fat layer and blood vessels and one of my two arteries from my arm to replace what they had to remove. They failed to make me understand that I would have a scar from my wrist to my elbow after it was all done. I knew I’d have a Y shaped scar on my neck, but when I came out of surgery on March 3rd after 8 hours on the table. I was shocked to see the long incision on my arm.
Because they were doing surgery on my mouth and neck I also had to have a tracheotomy because I was going to be too swollen to breath normally. That is an odd sensation let me tell you. You feel like you have to work to breath. So you breath deeper than you need to. When in reality you can just breath normally and you’ll do fine. You become obsessed with how much air your lungs take in. Because your not used to consciously breathing. Which is dumb again because your still doing an automatic action that you don’t need to think about. But you do anyway. I healed out of my trach two days faster than they were expecting. I was also using 97 to 98 percent lung capacity, they look for 88 to 93 percent. Not bad for someone who had chronic bronchitis for ten years.
My mom came up from Arizona to help me recover because I was going to be on a feeding tube for 2 months and on heavy medication for at least 3. Turned out I have been on the Oxycodon for 4 months and I’m currently weaning myself of the drug. I didn’t get any of the drug high that they kept warning about but my system did become addicted. The migraine headache I had for two weeks when I first started getting off the Oxycodon was terrible. Now I just have a mild ache that gets less each day. I’m still not back at work. ugh. However, they did get all the cancer so I’m good and cancer free now.
I’ll talk more about the ups and down of recovery in another post but this is just supposed to be a catch up post. During all this my son A applied and was accepted to DigiPen Institute up in Redmond, Wa. He was accepted into their Bachelor of Science in Game Design degree program. All the grants and loans have been approved so his first year is now paid for and we move him up to his new apartment next week.
E is going to be a Junior this year and with her brother moving away to college is finally starting to come out of her shell more. Its almost like she had her brother to hide behind but now has to stand on her own two feet and she’s doing well. I think having my mom up here for 4 months also helped her. They shared a room and did a lot of talking. They became close. Mom has recently returned to Arizona but she is welcome back any time.
So that is where we are at. Trying to get off meds so I can go back to work. Kids adjusting to starting their own lives and wondering… Where did the time go?
