Back to it.

Greetings, everybody!  It is I, Bryce, back from the brink of insanity and here to regale you with stories from the edge.  OK, so that is probably a bit much...but I am here to update everyone in my own words the major events of the last week or so.  Jessica did a fantastic job updating in my absence, in addition to doing an amazing job taking care of me and watching over me during my hospital stay.

Speaking of the hospital, let's talk a bit about that.  I really like my surgeon and the team of people that perform my surgeries there at MD Anderson.  I like them a lot and I think they do an incredible job doing what they do and feel like they have done amazing work on me, especially this time around.  This surgery could have been so much worse, but they did everything they could to take it easy on my and make the impact to my body (and consequently, my life) much less severe, I think.  The big changes to my body are that my trachea now exits  my chest at the base of my neck, so I have a large hole there now and I have no ability to talk whatsoever.  Time will tell if they got everything and my body is now rid of the cancer, but if it is, I will gladly take that trade off.  They were able to fill the newly created voids in my neck with the existing flap that I got in the last surgery (my former right pectoral muscle) and did not have to re-purpose my left pectoral and for that, I am very glad.  I still have a lot of swelling in my right neck, so that looks kind of funky, but I can honestly tell you that I am extremely happy to be alive right now and considering the scenarios that I had running through my mind in the weeks before surgery, I am amazed at the outcome of this surgery and how well I have recovered to this point.  So that is the good, let's talk a bit about the bad.  The hospital stay there was, again, a complete nightmare.  The nice thing about living in my body for the last 37 years is that I kind of know it.  Even through all the changes, I know what it feels like when I have a full bladder and need to pee.  I have always had issues using the bathroom after these surgeries, especially after they remove the Foley catheter...but I can do it when my body has enough fluid in it to need to do so.  The motto of the MD Anderson nursing manual must be: "Force a catheter up their pee-hole, ask questions later".  They again evacuated my bladder by using a straight catheter because they felt I was not outputting enough, ignoring the fact, in my opinion, that I was not getting very much in the way of fluids at that point.  The straight catheter, in addition to relieving me of piss, also greatly pisses me off.  I argued with them relentlessly, which is EXTREMELY hard to do when you do not have the ability to talk.  I was mad.  Even after the first straight catheter, they were about to try it a second time and this time I was not going to let them do it.  I gave them mathematical representations of my input versus output, I pleaded with them.  I know my body, I know what it feels like when there is fluid in my bladder, I know how to use the bathroom in a way that I can comfortably do it even after these surgeries.  They did not listen to me at all.  They never do.  They brought in the first (of 2) ultrasound machines to see how much fluid was in me.  None.  Couldn't find any.  At that point, they could have believed me when I said I didn't have anything in there, but they didn't.  They went and got ANOTHER ultrasound machine.  The results from the second machine?  Nothing.  There was absolutely nothing in my bladder.  SHOCKING.  They left dejected, and I was the happiest I had been in a long while.  It was such a satisfying feeling when they came back in to let me know they consulted with my surgeon's fellow and he said I might be dehydrated and to give me a liter of fluids.  The happiness was short lived, however, as their insatiable desire to put things in the many output only orifices of the body once again reared its ugly head and they turned their attention to the movement of my bowels.  I won't go in to detail on that one, but lets just say they won that battle.  After just a short 6 night stay in the hospital, I was discharged on Sunday and we made the 3 hour drive back to Lago Vista and settled back in to the comforts of home and things got much, much better.

Now that the surgery is behind me, I can definitely say that the build up to it was far worse than the actual event itself.  Prior to surgery, one of my biggest fears was feeling trapped inside my body with no way to communicate my thoughts since I didn't have a voice.  Some of that was realized and I still struggle with communication now, but those first few days it was maddening.  It is an incredibly frustrating experience to suddenly not have the ability to talk, and I will have to work on my patience in the coming months.  Overall, however, I am feeling better than I have in months.  There is no longer the stress of the unknown from a radical surgery, I now know what I am faced with and can adjust accordingly.  For now, I am at home resting and recovering.  I am recovering remarkably well for what I have been through, I think.  This surgery was one of the more invasive and yet I am recovering better from this one than I have from any of the previous.  Blind optimism says that I am recovering so well because they got everything out and my body is now free to heal itself minus any cancerous cell growth, so let's go with that.  I have more to say, but Jessica really wants me to post something, so this is it for now.  I have until the 22nd before my next appointment, so I have some time to rest.