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This past Friday, I walked into Edward Hospital in Naperville IL with Stage 3 lung cancer, and I walked (OK, was wheeled) out yesterday cancer-free. It took six hours of surgery and the removal of the upper lobe of my right lung, but they dove in there with the Roto-rooter and the Shop-Vac and EVICTED that bitch of a tumor. Yeah TEAM! Sic em!
Thanks to really effective chemo and a surgeon who I conservatively regard as Superman, this was accomplished entirely with non-invasive (VATS) video-assisted thoracic surgery. Initially, this was expected to require the dreaded thoracotomy incision and a sleeve resection -- much nastier, but when the cancer has your windpipe, it's not leaving without a fight. This would have required months of recovery time; instead, I expect to be back working full-time in early May (less than two weeks from now!)
Let me add that these guys also have the BEST DRUGS on the PLANET, and they aren't stingy about dispensing them. I'd like the anesthesiologist to move next door to me. We could be best friends, I'm sure of it.
That said, I was out of ICU in about a day, and 100% off of pain meds as of Tuesday. For some reason, they sent me home with a bonus prize of a prescription for some Oxys, which I might not even fill -- or perhaps I will, strictly for recreational and investigative purposes. Somebody has to do it.
So I'm back in my own blissfully nurse-free home at last, where I can poop without permission or supervision, and where I keep a good stock of adequately tasty human food. And a nice 3-pound engineer's mallet, because, I swear, anything that awakens me with a beeping sound will be promptly destroyed, with extreme prejudice. Six days of EKG, lung function monitors, IV pumps and heart rate monitors all sounding off at the slightest provocation, each with its own annoying pitch and duration, is just about enough to send me to the edge.
And that about wraps it up. A few weeks of convalescence and I have (we hope...) successfully dodged perhaps the Mother of all Bullets, the dreaded capital 'C', and the significance of my extremely good fortune is not lost on me.
RB
Thanks to really effective chemo and a surgeon who I conservatively regard as Superman, this was accomplished entirely with non-invasive (VATS) video-assisted thoracic surgery. Initially, this was expected to require the dreaded thoracotomy incision and a sleeve resection -- much nastier, but when the cancer has your windpipe, it's not leaving without a fight. This would have required months of recovery time; instead, I expect to be back working full-time in early May (less than two weeks from now!)
Let me add that these guys also have the BEST DRUGS on the PLANET, and they aren't stingy about dispensing them. I'd like the anesthesiologist to move next door to me. We could be best friends, I'm sure of it.
That said, I was out of ICU in about a day, and 100% off of pain meds as of Tuesday. For some reason, they sent me home with a bonus prize of a prescription for some Oxys, which I might not even fill -- or perhaps I will, strictly for recreational and investigative purposes. Somebody has to do it.
So I'm back in my own blissfully nurse-free home at last, where I can poop without permission or supervision, and where I keep a good stock of adequately tasty human food. And a nice 3-pound engineer's mallet, because, I swear, anything that awakens me with a beeping sound will be promptly destroyed, with extreme prejudice. Six days of EKG, lung function monitors, IV pumps and heart rate monitors all sounding off at the slightest provocation, each with its own annoying pitch and duration, is just about enough to send me to the edge.
And that about wraps it up. A few weeks of convalescence and I have (we hope...) successfully dodged perhaps the Mother of all Bullets, the dreaded capital 'C', and the significance of my extremely good fortune is not lost on me.
RB
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