Coming Out of the Vortex

While I will never leave Cancer World entirely, I am starting to see the exit route out of this current vortex--the one I entered a few weeks before the June operation.  Last evening Terry and I did some deck time, and I was able to slowly sip about a half can of Dale's Pale Ale. Terry and I had a nice walk this morning, and I was able to complete my breakfast feeding in about 15 minutes, now that we can inject the liquid food into the PEG tube, instead of depending on the pump or gravity drip.  We were able to spend some time this morning working on our new garden, trying to wrestle it back from the bugs, squirrels, and other critters that have tasted a lot more of our produce than we have so far.

So, except for the breakfast gig, this is looking and feeling like any other normal Saturday morning in July--a sure sign that we have turned the corner out of Hell Lite. My online cancer support folks call that the "abi-normal" life of a cancer survivor. I call it Cancer Revenge.

This is not to say that I am back 100%.  My left arm and hand are about 75% functional, and at risk for injury, so I have to be very careful with how I use them.  My swallowing is getting better, but still a long ways from eating food orally.  My speech is still very weak and unclear--I mumble a lot.  The new surgical scars around my mouth also cause me to drool some.  Some of you might be chuckling, saying that mumbling and drooling are not new for me.

I can buy that.

All signs indicate that my mouth and jaw are healing well, so we are now in another wait-and-see period to know when the next part of my reconstruction can start--the dental work.  Probably another 6 months.

Now that the end of this vortex is in sight, it's time to award the winners in the "Get Well Card" competition that Terry started while I was in the hospital.  Before I say who won, it needs to be said that many of you are very disturbed people with very twisted senses of humor.  That's to say--our kind of folks.  Your cards did the trick to give us a lot of laughs at a time when we needed them, and to keep up the idea that one of the best ways to fight cancer is with humor.  Thanks.

So, with that, the winners are Greg and Gena, for their card "20 fun things to do when recovering from surgery."  The card itself was a hoot, but their added comments put them over the top in the competition.

We will stash this set of cards away with all the others we've gotten in the past 6 years, and use them in a chapter of the book I will be writing about our journeys in Cancer World.  I have a publisher for the book, which will be based largely on the blog entries. At some point I will ask anyone on Team Mike who wants to contribute to the book to send something along for a chapter devoted to all the love and support we've been given since all of this started.  More on that later.

In the meantime, time to get back to our abi-normal Saturday, and to taking more steps to get completely out of the this current vortex.

Mike