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.