here is a picture of dr ryu, my oncologist, me, and dr seok, a surgical intern i think (he likes to examine stitching in various places).
dr ryu was talking with me this morning. he said to peter, “he talks.” he was refering to the fact that if i cover my tracheotomy hole i can make these breathy poorly articulated phrases.
in answer to his observation i said, breathy but understandable, “한국말도” [korean too].
dr ryu grinned broadly. “youre going to be just fine.”
so many have been so kind and helpful, from close friends to strangers "just doing their jobs" – notably so many nurses going out of their way to help.
yesterday getting out of the icu and coming to the regular ward, helen then curt then grace then peter came to visit me and bring me stuff. then when the hospital insisted that because it was first night out some next of kin should stay with me, peter ended up doing it, sleeping awkwardly on the fold out cot beside my bed and rearranging my empire of pillows – its almost impossible to find a sleeping position when i have four bandaged areas and sleeping flat on my back is impossible too.
such generosity people have shown, that i will emerge from this with such a store of gratitude that i wont have room for anything else – except the six or so pillows on my bed with which we keep trying engineer potentially workable sleeping positions.
i suppose that might seem optimistic – pointlessly so. cancer operates by stealth, sneaking into some spot and then waiting months or years to decide to grow in one spot but not another. its hard to inagine there arent some cells floating around. but as long as they dont metastasize then you're essentially cancer free. . . and since all scans and the survey done during surgery didnt seem to turn anything up, the claim doesnt feel that extravagant. the kind doctor ryu hacked the tumor out thursday morning. it was the simplest part. . . most of the nine hour surgery was about looking around my head and neck and scraping out some high risk lymphs and then rebuilding me a functional tongue using meat and vessels from my right arm. i also had a surgery site at my right groin area, but its not clear to me if that was for additional reconstruction materials or for "putting stuff in " ie all those cool snakey vein- and artery-traveling robo scopes and micro tools that are part of high tech medicine.
the whole thing has been incredibly brief. less than three weeks from suggested biopsy to confirmation then removal . . but oral cancers are notoriously fast moving so each step hasnt seemed excessive as it was taken. im grateful to the doctors i have fallen to – they have been compassionate but aggressive which seems a good combo in cancer medicine in its current state.
i have mostly set aside my preexisting discomfort with the discretized non holistic approach seen in cancer medicine, especially in korea. i guess ill give the process a chance, and only if it leaves me worse off than before will i shop actively among the various "alternative" medicines being championed by so many i care about. for all its faults, the standard approach is backed by alot of science, which i think speaks for itself.
my two days in the icu were some of the most intense i ever experienced. . . im going to try to "back post" some imptessionistic details on the dates in question, over the next few days before my memory of them gets too foggy.
