Anyway, I asked for and received a stronger dosage of morphine, and like the curious dude I am, I wait until late evening of the 9th to see how a full dose of 1ml is going to treat me. At first I thought, eh, big deal. Fifteen minutes later I stood up to make certain my ass was in the same place as where I left it. It was, but I had to find it with a map and compass. By 2300 hrs I was out, The Son woke me up and 0710 to take him to school. I came home, fed three cans of formula, because I wasn't up to feed only two, sat down and started the computer. I woke up again at 1115 hrs. I slept a bunch. Just a few minutes shy of twelve hours. The really cool thing is that I woke up for the first time in ten years without any pain anywhere! Damn, that was nice. But, now I have to find which dose will give me relief and still let me function. I tested, since the prescription calls for .25 to 1 ml every hr if needed. Okay, that's simple enough, and I had pain coming back. First try, 0.25 ml, nada. Second 0.5 ml, some but not quite. Third, 0.75 ml and that seemed to be the charm. Pain was gone, I could still function well, and it lasted close to 6 hrs. Sweet. Now I know when to med up to prevent getting behind the pain and to stay ahead of it. This ain't so bad at all.
I took a flashlight, grabbed a mirror and looked inside my mouth. Except in the last 3 weeks my right mandible isn't correct, and I can no longer open my mouth wide enough to really look. I'm talking with my Hospice nurse to see if he can get someone to check out my jaw to see if the cancer isn't off into the bone. I have a sneaky suspicion it is hanging out there, and possible close to my right inner ear. That will suck if that's the case. Back to my mouth. I look, I move the tongue around as much as I can. It still looks like I've got three tongues in there, judging by multiple ledges and thick spots. I see that my esophagus is almost 75% cut off from the front of my missing soft palate (which still lets me breath through my nose) back to nearly the very back of my throat. It has a nice little slat looking window for stuff I can't swallow to get into my trachea and aspirate it so I can cough it up and enjoy it twice. Shit.
I've also got spots that I can see that are (at least at that time) seeping a dribble of blood. That explains some of the funny taste in my mouth, and why it wasn't really showing up in my suction pot. Not enough to bother with, and I believe I aspirate and cough that back out through the trach as well. Once again, I apparently recycle myself. There are a couple of spots with lovely black dots in them. Visible cancer. I believe those to be Baxter's forward scouts. My tongue has gotten so thick on the left side now that I can't move it enough to see how that side of my mouth looks. I'm betting it's a lot like the right side of my mouth. No reason it shouldn't be, right? At least I have an idea of what's going on in the places I can see. I can't see down my trachea so I don't know really what's there. I do, however, cough up blood clots from time to time. Some are very soft like fresh blood, others are hard as rocks and are difficult to move out. I am wondering if those aren't from deeper in my trachea and are attracting mucus to seal up the leak. I know when I hack up one of the bigger clots, I bleed pretty profusely for ten or so minutes. Not gusher, but enough in that little dab of time that I can fill a hand towel fairly full of mucus and expectorated blood. The towel isn't dripping with the stuff, but it's damp from top to bottom. I knew all of this was going to happen, because I asked the Doc for worst case scenario and he told me quite a few things. Some of them he still down played, I believe. Some knowledge is better than no knowledge at all, though.
My damn right leg wears out way fast now. That's a change from a month ago when I was getting winded so easily. I don't get winded that easily now, but my right leg hates me for letting them cut out half of it's quad. It's carrying a grudge. I can walk about anywhere I want, and if I'm going to walk over a block or so I drag the O2 with me just in case. Kinda handy to have that, really. I was more silly than not for raging against the O2. I have decided that only showed me off as being dumb as a box of rocks. There are several people who would say "You just now figured that out?" Yes, I'm slow. It does bother me though, that it gets the shakes something fierce but never aches like I've over worked it. It just trembles like I've taken it as far as it can go, and pushed some more. Like doing heavy squats until you can't stand up to finish that last repetition. Only once the leg starts that, it's difficult to get it to stop. I feed it a little sugar water, and that helps to calm it down a bit. I'd rather use honey, but I'm not certain I can thin that enough to get it into the tube and not clog. That would be bad, m'kay? I expect my arms to do that, since my shoulders and neck are so dicked up. All of those contribute to my arm, shoulder, and neck weakness. My neck is very solid to the touch, like the muscle is in rigor mortice. With some lymphedema therapy (reduces the swelling in my neck and shoulders) and massage, I can get some muscle to relax. This is good since it helps with my range of motion, as well as my mental well being. I wonder from time to time, since the muscle is so much like a stone, if the cancer hasn't taken a liking to my neck. I hope not, that would really suck. Then the only recourse is decapitation. I'm not certain I could survive that. Not for more than a day or two anyway. Short blog today. I'm still adapting to the new morphine dose and a couple of other things, hope I'm adapted quickly.
Back in the early 70's we lived in Great Bend Ks, with the ass end of a mobile home backed up against the Arkansas river, and it's flood control berm. South Walnut, not the bustling, wealthy or even middle class side of town. It was us poor kids on our own down there. There were fun things to do though. There was a neglected Granny Smith Apple orchard. The fruit was tiny, double sour, and hard as a damn rock. A person with a half decent arm could knock the flyin piss out of someone. I know, because the neighborhood thug, an eighteen year old eighth grader named Devon, drilled me square in the temple with one. Liked to turned my damn lights out. That summer some folks from Louisiana moved into the park. I can see all three of the boys in that family clear as a fucking bell, but I can't remember their names, weird huh? Anyway, as is the want with us poor folk when new people move to town you gotta find out what type of people they are. I found out pretty fast these three douche drinkers weren't worth shit. They were gang up on a person if their bluejay mouth over ran their scrawny asses.
Anyway, these three little fuckers make buds with the eighteen year old eighth grader. How they did that, I'll never know. Looking back though, he had to be the only kid in grade eight that could legally buy beer. If he'd been half human, that would have made him pretty cool. All it did in reality was make him a stupid bitch that bullied kids five or six years younger than him. Okay, all that aside, this is what happened about two weeks before school. I'm out dickin around on the berm since it was big enough for vehicles and had a nice sand road on top. One of the peckerwood kids throws a rock and nailed me in the side. It was the oldest, the one that was my age. I decided I'd had enough of that little cock munch and was gonna drill his ass. Which I did. What I didn't see was Devon come up out of the cover on the river side of the berm. BOOM! Blind sided by a guy that was six or seven years older than me and had about a hundred pounds on me. I didn't go down, but turned and rammed an elbow into his nuts. Now he's howling, I didn't get a square shot or he'd gone down. I did, however, get some really good shots in before one of the peckerwood crew got behind me and knock my feet out from under me.
Devon was on me like white on rice. Beat the living shit right out of me, and I think may have put the boots to me while I was down. So now I'm limping home, the water works are on. My dad (who thought it was one of the peckerwood crew) said "Don't stand and bawl about it, either stop crying or go whip his ass." Yep, off I went, only I couldn't see at all out of my left eye and my right was going closed. Once again, I got a few good shots in on Devon, but, alas, once again he beat me blind. My dad apologized forever about that. I didn't see it like he should have, I didn't tell him an eighteen year old whipped my ass. Believe me, it wasn't the first ass whippin, and it wasn't the last, either.
I laugh about it now, but God almighty I got a beating. Twice!
Have fun today, kids. Do something I would (excluding jumping someone that has about 100lbs on you), and enjoy yourself
Hugs and shit
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