About 5 weeks ago, while having a routine checkup at the dentist, it was suggested that I have a Vizalite test. It is a special light that can detect abnormalities inside the mouth, especially skin discoloration that could possibly be cancerous. The cost was reasonable, $55, so I agreed. A spot less than the size of my little fingernail was found, so I was sent to an Oral Surgeon in Nashville. Dr. Carter examined my mouth and told me he felt the spot should be removed and biopsied. I agreed, so the insurance processes were started and surgery was scheduled. After waiting for all parties to agree that it was a medical procedure, not a dental one, a date was agreed upon.
On August 5th, my brother Tom drove me to the surgery center in Nashville for my 1 PM appointment. The waiting room was almost empty so I thought I would be in and out very fast. But it quickly filled, after the staff returned from lunch, with a cross section of Nashville’s finest orally challenged citizens, and they were all seen before me. At 2:45, I was finally taken to the back for my pre and post-op instructions, medical checks, and use of my American Express card.
At 3 PM I was taken into a room with an operating table in the center of it, and instructed to lay on my back on the table. The nurse on my left prepared me for an IV sedation and the one on the right hooked me up to the ECG monitor, the pulse ox machine and put a BP cuff on me. Dr Carter came in and looked into my mouth, told me the spot didn’t look too bad to him, but he would remove it anyway. The drip flow started and within seconds I was in La-La land. Around 3:30, I was conscious again with my tongue feeling about as big as a golf ball. I was feeling no pain at all. That would come later, I was told. I was given a prescription for some Percoset, and sent on my way. We were back in Murfreesboro at my house, with a filled bottle of Percoset by 4:45.
Since I haven’t eaten since the evening before, it will be interesting to see what will fit past my large feeling tongue. I know that liquids will, so it will be a bourbon start, leading to maybe some soup. I can begin to feel the stitches in my mouth, which I don’t think I’m going to like. I’m finding the little sticky pads used to hook up the ECG leads on my body, which when ripped off bring body hair with them. Pain is involved there. I took a Percoset a while back, but with my mouth being so numb, I can’t tell if I swallowed it or if it’s still in there. I can sort of talk, but being understood may be difficult. That’s not a problem tonight, since I’m alone, but tomorrow may be different. We shall see.
It’s 11:30 PM and the pain showed up about 2 hours ago. My tongue feels as if it’s almost too large to fit in my mouth. It hurts to swallow. Sleep is out of the question, since when I lay down, my swollen tongue seems to block my air passages, making breathing very hard. Also, for some reason, perhaps part of the healing process, my saliva glands are working in high gear. This creates a need for a spittoon, since swallowing is painful. The ‘spit’ has a rosy tinge to it to remind me that indeed, my tongue was filleted today. Plus I haven’t eaten in 30 hours, and alcohol is a definite no-no, not to be mixed with the antibiotics I’m popping, which by the way, don’t seem to be doing very much good. All indications lead me to believe that this is going to be a very long night.
8 AM Friday…..It was a very long night, to say the least. It was spent in the chair in front of my computer. I tried laying down several times, but the breathing problem was there, and in fact, still is. Until the swelling of my tongue goes down, life will be a problem. Eating is out of the question, along with drinking even small quantities of anything. I’m trying to consume enough water when I take the pain pills to keep hydrated. I brought in a stack of pillows last night and by placing them on my desk, was able to nod off every now and then, by resting my head on them. The pain is under control, and if I can figure out a way to get my tongue back to normal, life can proceed on.
Oh yeah- I can’t talk. I can make sounds, but nothing that could be used in a conversation. That’s why I’m putting this on paper. I have a follow-up appointment next Thursday with the doctor to discuss the results of the biopsy of the tongue pieces I left behind. Hopefully I’ll be able to talk by then.
About 3 PM, Friday it occurred to me that the pain pills were sort of working, but I was not taking anything to help will the swelling. I checked my medicine cabinet, but found nothing that specifically said ‘relieves swelling’. After looking at some medical sites on the internet, the best I could come up with was ibuprofen. So I took a couple, and within an hour, I could feel my tongue deflating slightly. Oh, Joy!!! Life was easing back on me a little bit. By 6 PM, my speech was better, my swallowing was better, and I felt like maybe some soup would be in order. So I had some chicken noodle and waited to see how it went.
By bedtime, I felt like I could try sleeping in my bed, instead of by the computer. But I awoke around midnight unable to breathe, so back to the computer room and the chair I went. I spent the rest of the night, sitting up and nodding in and out, until 6 AM. I went back to bed then, and got another good hour of sleep laying down, before no breath woke me up again. I’ll try to nap in my chair when the urge comes upon me, and hope I can catch a few zz’s here and there.
Sat, 8-7 I feel a little better this morning. Still have a little pain and some swelling, but not enough to try to eat something. The ibuprofen seems to be helping. I also found some Darvoset that was left over from my neck surgery. Between the 3 drugs I can get some rest, I think. A shake from McDonalds sounded good, and a thin-crust Vege-delite pizza from Poppa Murphy’s might be good for dinner. So I went out and got them. I fixed me a baloney sandwich to go with the shake and turned on NASCAR while I had lunch. The shake was good, but I found out chewing was still a problem. So I had half the sandwich before calling it off. My brother came over for the race from Watkins Glenn, and when he left, he took the pizza with him. Soup it is, for me.
The night before, I started taking 2 Cephalexin capsules, an antibiotic, to help with the swelling. I don’t know if it was drug interaction or what, but around 7 PM I started have chills, and I felt hot and cold. I took my temperature and found it to be 101.5 degrees. I went to bed with an extra blanket, and by 9 PM, everything seemed to be back to normal. Temp was 98.6 and no chills of flashes. So I took a Percoset and an ibuprofen and went to bed. At 6 AM I got up, took a Darvon and an ibuprofen and went back to bed and slept until 10 AM.
Sunday, 8-8. I’m feeling much better after getting a good nights rest. I make some coffee and bring in the papers. The papers up here leave a lot to be desired. I sort them out, The Nashville Tennessean, and the Murfreesboro Daily Journal, and get 1 pound of relevant news and sports, and 6 pounds of flyers and other commercial crap. Since they have no recycling in Murfreesboro, I box it up for the landfill. The Sunday NASCAR race begins at noon, My brother will be over to watch it. Maybe I’ll try a beer during the race.
Well, my guy, Marcos Ambros from Tasmania, gave it a good run at Watkins Glen today, but came up a little short, finishing 3rd. He’s getting better every race. I put on some Szeswan Hot & Sour soup and had that for dinner, along with an ice cream bar. Not very filling, but enough to keep me going until tomorrow. I really want something medium rare and juicy, but steak through a straw doesn’t appeal to me enough to do it. Tomorrow I have an appointment with my PCP for the routine stuff, and I’ll see if he has enough sympathy to write me some really good drugs scripts, or at least something to help with the swelling. I’m going to take the usual pills, go to bed and watch the end of Shark Week. Maybe I can enjoy a vicarious meal of seal pups and rotten whale blubber. That should give me good dreams.
Monday, 8-9 I went into town and visited with Dr. Payne (PCP) this morning. I had a pretty good night and slept decent for a change. The good Doctor told me that if I wanted the good stuff, I’d have to get it from the guy that caused the damage to my mouth. Oh, well, the pain isn’t really that bad so I can wait until the follow-up on Thursday with Dr Carter. I did get my regular stuff written up so I can send it to Canada and get the stuff I need from India or New Zealand, by way of some islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Hopefully if I do it right, I can stay out of the dreaded doughnut hole that we fell into last year. It amazes me that 200 years ago, anyone lived past the age of 40, or survived even a minor infection. They had no drugs, to speak of, and no clue of what was really going on in the human body. Got a head ache? Just drill a hole in your skull and let it out. Got something wrong with an arm or a leg? Get out the saw and whack it off. So I guess I should just shut up, be thankful that there is a place in the world that makes the drugs I can afford, and just send them the check. Now I have to go count the pills I have in the house, to determine how many of each of the seven different drugs I take I will need to order, in order to make it until the end of the year, so the whole process can start over again. By the way, I do have my doctor’s blessing to buy drugs from Canada. So I do.
For dinner, I heated up a can of soup, dumped it into my blender, whirled away the big chunks, poured it into a coffee cup and sucked it up with a straw. Not just any straw, mind you, but one that comes with a McDonalds milkshake. It has the width to suck up minor chunks of goodness without clogging. Then I cleaned the blender and made a homemade milkshake with chocolate Ovaltine to make sure I’m getting the vitamins and minerals I need to heal. I figured I might try an OTC sleeping pill to try to make it through the night. Long ago I found out that most OTC sleeping pills are based on one of two chemicals- di-something-something, and di-something- something succinate. If I take the first one I get ‘Happy Feet’, where my legs want to dance for an hour or so, involuntary of course. The one with the succinate doesn’t cause this effect and seems to help with the sleep. I took the wrong one last night and was dancing for 2 hours, until 2 AM. It doesn’t matter where you are, in bed or in a chair- you’re going to dance. So I went to the computer chair of healing and sleeping and sat down. I discovered that if you go along with the dancing by moving your lower legs and feet around, up here they call it clogging or buck dancing, you can help flush the drug from your body faster and then try to get some sleep. I guarantee that if anyone had peeked into the room last night and saw me dancing in my chair like a fool, I’d have to finish this down on the farm, ‘funny’ that is. Eventually I went back to the master crash pad. There I turned on the TV and let it help me drift away on Food Network re-runs. ‘Anthony, Andrew, the whale blubber is spoiled!!!zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.’
Tuesday, 8-10 In case anyone hasn’t noticed the weather is HOT! In Middle Tennessee, it is the hottest summer in nigh on a hunnerd years. The hens are laying hard boiled eggs. Mocha Latte’s are coming from the cows. Fish are jumping right into your ice chest just to cool off. I mean it’s HOT. When I was younger, I could put on some cut-offs and a tank top and spend all day outside in the Miami heat, and barely break a sweat. Now I get drenched just watching the weather report in the A/C of the living room. My electric bills were very reasonable last year, but this year, they have almost doubled. Is it the heat or the A/C? When I went downtown on the 1st to pay my rent, I ran into the property manager. It seem the owner of this house, who lives in California, was in charge of the maintenance. So, I asked Mr. Wright to inform Mr. Roder that the interior of the house was on the warm side during the afternoons, and could he have the A/C unit checked. I was informed that he got the message and that someone would check it on the 10th, today. So this morning, a service truck pulled up, the technician unloaded his tools, a dog, and a pony, and proceeded to check the A/C unit. After a look here and a measurement there, I was informed that the unit was functioning properly and my situation was as good as it was going to get. You see, the differential reading of the Celsius inlet valve should be on a proper ratio of the outlet Kelvin generator to the Freon level in the sight valve glass. The optimum reading would be between 10 and 20 percent of the atomic weight of the hydrocarbons flowing through the system. Mine was 8, which was good since it meant my system had a slight overcharge. Speaking of overcharge, I’m glad I wasn’t paying the bill for this load of crap. He packed up his show and left, leaving me still a little warm, especially under the collar. But what can you do? Agreed the temperatures are higher this year, but hey, I lived in Miami for 50 years and know a little bit about hot. I never had an A/C unit that was functioning properly fail to cool the house, and the last place was a big one. What this guy would have me believe is that every one in Tennessee with a heat pump heating/cooling system is suffering the same as I am. This entire rental house situation has never been a good one, due to the property manager and the owner. I think it’s time to re-evaluate and maybe make a move. I need to recover first and gather my thoughts. I haven’t had a drink in 6 days. I’m not used to dealing with life on these terms.
I really need to satisfy my carnivorous cravings, also. I wonder how a sirloin would do in the blender? Maybe use some bourbon as a emulsifying liquid. Maybe drop in a baked potato and some sour cream. Hmmmmm, Nah…I don’t think my McDonalds straw could handle it. Soup it is, again. Soon, though I’ll be able to fire up the grill and do up some rib eyes, yes, some I said. My protein level is mighty low, and I’ll never be able to make it until the first of September and the Texas trip. I need it now!
Wed 8-11 Not much change today. The swelling is pretty much gone, but the stitches are driving me nuts. I’m really tired of soft food, so I’m going to try a Boston Market frozen dinner tonight- Beef Tips and Noodles, with Apple Sauce on the side. Yummy! I went to the foot doctor and picked up my diabetic shoes today. Oh yeah, I’m one of those too, along with all my other reasons to take expensive pills. I got a call from the PCP office that my blood work from Monday had been received and that they needed to see me next week to discuss possibly a new strategy for dealing with my high this and my low that. Reading between the lines, that means new drugs and new calls to Canada and new packages from the Far East with new drugs. If they would just legalize Marijuana, I wouldn’t need all of these other drugs, or at least I wouldn’t care. We’re all going to die of something- mine will probably be overdosing on generic drugs from India because of a sanitary slipup at one of the manufacturing plants on the outskirts of Bhophal. God!, 8 days without a drink. Man was not supposed to live this way. I have seen reality and I don’t like it very much. And what is it with all of these stupid reality TV shows? Don’t people have enough drama and pathos and hostility in their own real lives to take care of, without importing it electronically every day? Or is this how life really is and I’ve been a pint a day away from reality for 45 years? Time for bed. I’m going to try to find Mark and Ollie on the Discovery Channel and see what tribe they are bonding with. Maybe they will let me bond too. WooHoo! Off to the Amazon.
Thursday 8-12 This may be the last day of this missive. I’m going back to the Oral Surgery Institute this afternoon and let Dr Carter give me the results of the chunk of flesh he removed and see if he will remove the stitches that are preventing me from enjoying La Dolce Vida. Brother Tom and Gloria are on the way to Minnesota to visit with number one son for a week, so I’m on my own for a while. Driving is no problem, I just hope the results are worth the trip.
The results are in and I do not have the dreaded ‘C’. However, it seems my tongue reacted to the stitches in a negative way and that has resulted in the swelling that I am still dealing with. I was told that the stitches will dissolve over time and my mouth will return to its normal self. They could not be cut out, since they are now ‘embedded’ in my tongue. I think I’ve taken tongue piercing to a new level. It may take 7-10 days longer for them to melt away. So, on the way home from the doctor, I stopped at Publix and bought a weeks worth of soft stuff to live on. My new diet is based on Ice Cream, Twinkies, and Applesauce.
Tomorrow being Friday the 13th, and my health situation under control, I will close this chapter of my written life. It’s been an interesting week, EH?
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