For something that’s called ‘surgery’, today’s operation was pretty easy on the patient. Crack of dawn arrival, answer questions, get undressed and get unconscious. (The anaesthesiologist turned out to be a fellow brewer, so there was some shop talk in there.)An hour and change later, you wake up groggy with a wicked sore throat and a keen desire for breakfast and a nap. Your escort takes you home and puts you to bed. She kisses your forehead if you're lucky.
The term of choice for something like this at Fox Chase is 'procedure', as if to emphasize its kinship with other procedures like chopping an onion or planing the bevel on a sheer clamp. There's even a suite of rooms called the Short Procedure Unit, although no cutting boards or block planes are on display around the place.
The procedure is called a direct laryngoscopy or DL as we old cancer hands say. The sore throat comes from the breathing tube and all the pocket tools that are forced down your throat while you’re out. The grogginess is partly the drugs and partly the sleep deprivation that comes from waking up at five a.m. after a less-than-restful night.
Here’s what the procedure netted: nothing. Well, not exactly nothing, but nothing definitive. There was a big, sore ugly down there, but what was it? The good doctor says that it could be an ulcer where the tumor used to be, could be scar tissue and it could be the surviving remains of the tumor.
So he snipped out a piece and sent it off to the lab to be frozen and analysed. I guess that's a procedure too. The answer to the ‘could be’s’ above? It will be another week before we know. Stay tuned. I know that I certainly will.
• •
Cancer or not, you still have to walk the dog. Tonight it wasn’t so easy. I usually let go of her leash, tell her to heal* and walk to the park. When one of us has had enough, I put out my hand and call ‘touch’ and she comes to me. I say ‘give me your face’ and she sticks her head in the leash and we go home.
Tonight’s problem was that I couldn’t say ‘heel’ or much of anything else. It’ll probably be a few days until my dog-walking voice returns. So before we went out, I whistled (no damage to my whistling muscles), held out a treat and she came. Two more reps and she had it. Then I stamped my foot and pressed her rear down to a sit and gave her another treat. She got that one on one try. I held out the collar, she slid her head in and off we went.
I’d call that procedure an immediate success.
*slip of the keyboard there-of course I meant 'heel'.
The term of choice for something like this at Fox Chase is 'procedure', as if to emphasize its kinship with other procedures like chopping an onion or planing the bevel on a sheer clamp. There's even a suite of rooms called the Short Procedure Unit, although no cutting boards or block planes are on display around the place.
The procedure is called a direct laryngoscopy or DL as we old cancer hands say. The sore throat comes from the breathing tube and all the pocket tools that are forced down your throat while you’re out. The grogginess is partly the drugs and partly the sleep deprivation that comes from waking up at five a.m. after a less-than-restful night.
Here’s what the procedure netted: nothing. Well, not exactly nothing, but nothing definitive. There was a big, sore ugly down there, but what was it? The good doctor says that it could be an ulcer where the tumor used to be, could be scar tissue and it could be the surviving remains of the tumor.
So he snipped out a piece and sent it off to the lab to be frozen and analysed. I guess that's a procedure too. The answer to the ‘could be’s’ above? It will be another week before we know. Stay tuned. I know that I certainly will.
• •
Cancer or not, you still have to walk the dog. Tonight it wasn’t so easy. I usually let go of her leash, tell her to heal* and walk to the park. When one of us has had enough, I put out my hand and call ‘touch’ and she comes to me. I say ‘give me your face’ and she sticks her head in the leash and we go home.
Tonight’s problem was that I couldn’t say ‘heel’ or much of anything else. It’ll probably be a few days until my dog-walking voice returns. So before we went out, I whistled (no damage to my whistling muscles), held out a treat and she came. Two more reps and she had it. Then I stamped my foot and pressed her rear down to a sit and gave her another treat. She got that one on one try. I held out the collar, she slid her head in and off we went.
I’d call that procedure an immediate success.
*slip of the keyboard there-of course I meant 'heel'.
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