Week 2 of Wait and See, and a vent

It's been two weeks since the debridement so I thought I'd post an update.  I had a follow up with the surgeon last Friday between him reading pages in a "100 Years of Fenway Park" souvenir magazine I gave him, telling me that he sees nothing out of the ordinary.  Seriously, I knew he went to Harvard Medical School and is a big Sox fan, so I brought this magazine to him to read AFTER my consultation.  He was so excited to get it that he was flipping through pages while he was talking with me and Terry.  He did put it down long enough to look in my mouth for a minute to check out his handiwork.

The upshoot is that it's way too early to know if the procedure will be successful, but at least there are no early signs to worry about.  I do have a rather large hole in my gumline that can accommodate chunks of food that a squirrel would envy--too bad winter is behind us.

The day after the debridement I started 10 more hyperbaric oxygen treatments--and am happy to report that I have the last one tomorrow.  After that, I will retire the ol' Secrist 4100-H for good, even if a doctor tells me I need more time in it.  I'm convinced that these very expensive and time-consuming treatments are nowhere nearly effective enough to do again.  Once tomorrow's 'dive' is over, I will have spent over 100 hours in the chamber, and another 25+ hours in the facility before and after dives.  Think about that--it's the equivalent of losing more than 3 WEEKS of work (plus the reported sick time away) while sitting in a glass tube sucking compressed oxygen and watching CNN and Sportscenter.  A slacker's dream, but no more for this boy.

While I'm  waiting for some sign that the debridement will work (always thinking positive), I'm now looking at my next challenge--withdrawing from 3+ months on a very powerful pain killing medicine.  The good news is that my jaw pain is going down--allowing me to take less of the med.  The bad news is that as I wean myself off the Roxicet, I'm starting to feel withdrawl effects like sweating,  nausea and anxiety.

As the saying goes, "Radiation therapy--the gift that keeps on giving."

Sorry for the vent, folks, but after a while, the f$%^ing joke is over and I'd really like my old life back, so whoever is responsible, I say "Job well done, you really got  me--and I'm sorry for whatever I did to piss you off" and please return me to my old bearded, pain free, Cabernet Sauvignon-drinking, food-gulping, grossly over weight self.  And when you do that, please also replace the thousands of dollars of over-sized clothes that I gave away when I lost 55 pounds--I'll need them again soon.

Mike