iRobot

Today I had my 12 week MRI scan.  Now we are just waiting for results.  I really hate scans.  They are really hard on me emotionally....Arghh.

The stress they cause builds up for days.  A few nights ago I went to bed worried about all that.  Sometime in the night I had a dream that my scan had come back and the doctor came in and told me that the scan showed the cancer was all through my brain.  I was so unhappy.  Then the doctor said, "Don't worry, we did a study and it looks like you don't use your brain that much anyway so we are going to just take it out and turn you into a robot.  Don't worry, we do this kind of thing all the time"

Everything happened so fast then and the next thing I knew I was waking up from surgery and I was a robot.  The doctor handed a remote control to my wife with big buttons that said "Eat, talk, walk etc" Somehow I was supposed to be happy about the situation.  I guess since I didn't have a brain any more it probably didn't matter.  I woke up pretty unhappy though.  I hope it was just a dream.

Tick Tock Tick, Tock.....

Well, I am two weeks closer to my surgery.  Only 5 weeks left to wait.  The surgeon tells me that as soon as I wake up I will be able to open my mouth to a semi normal width....  I can almost remember what that is like.  Right now I can open my mouth just barely larger than my little finger.  The surgeon tells me that we will need stay in Miami for about a month after the surgery to make sure that there aren't complications.  I can think of worse places to have to stay.  Miami should be lovely.  JoLynne has a knack for finding nice places to stay.  She searches all these varied websites where people are renting their houses.  The house she found in Miami is truly beautiful.  Very nice,  looking out over a lake.  It will be nice to have a nice place to recover in.

We have loved having our sweet son Peter home from his mission.  He has a glow about him.  He still stomps me at ping pong but he is so nice about it.  Every time he destroys me in a ping pong game he comes around the table, hugs me and tells me he loves me.

In general my health is greatly improved.  It's so nice to have some energy back again.  I still deal with pain but at least I have some energy.  This weekend I planted my garden, scrubbed my fish pond and moved all the rabbit droppings into my garden.  I kind of wonder why things grown in animal pooh taste so good.  Maybe it's best not to think about that.

FaceTime

Well, we finally have a surgical date to reconstruct my face.  It will be April 17th in Miami.  We had hoped it would be earlier but it turned out to be complicated to schedule the operating room and all the surgeons at the same time.  So, April 17th it is.

I am really doing pretty well these days.  I even have hair.  JoLynne told me the other day my hair was pretty so I guess I was having a good hair day.  That's a nice change from a no hair days which is what I usually have.  So far it is straight and maybe a little more gray.  I think I earned it.

Most of my struggles these days are with pain.  Most of the pain is in the lower area of my jaw where all the tissue is dying.  We sincerely hope that when they cut that all out my pain will begin to improve.

I have been trying really hard to gain weight.  They need to take skin from somewhere and it seems my tummy is the most promising spot.  The micro vascular surgeon left me with a strong injunction to "Gain weight"  He wants me to stretch out that tummy so that he has more skin to work with.  I have never really paid much attention to what I eat but now I am being forced to.  I'm trying really hard to get 4000 calories a day.  It's harder than you might think, especially when it is hard to chew and swallow.  We have found that Costco vanilla ice cream has 650 calories per cup.  I can melt that and pour it in my tube.  Sometimes when I really come up short I just dump straight olive oil in my tube.  That has a ton of calories and it keeps you so regular.  When this is all done I may write a diet book "The olive oil diet miracle."  Who knows, it might be a best seller.