Road Trippin'
Ohhh I am so far behind in updating all of you wonderful people and I apologize. I'm just a little behind on life. Things over here are moving along, although definitely at a slower pace than I would like. The hospital bed in the dining room is gone, as is the feeding tube and the nursing visits are done so I don't feel like a patient on a daily basis, for which I am grateful. I started driving again so that's another step in the right direction. The super great news is that the tumor and cancer are gone and I will not need radiation or chemo which was the best news we ever could have heard! When my surgeon told us (my mom and sis were with me) that he was able to get everything and the margins were clear there were lots of tears and hugs with him and my sweet nurse and each other and it was such a huge sense of relief. Amen, everyone. A-freaking-MEN. I'll continue to get scans every 3 months and I actually have the first set scheduled for a few weeks from now so of course there is anxiety there that it will show up somewhere else, but the chances of that are slim. (Then again, the chances of any of this insanity happening were slim, so who the hell knows. I'm just not going to stress about the unknown.)
What lies ahead are several reconstructive surgeries to fix my face, which honestly looks better than we thought it would but definitely needs some work. When they created the new jaw from my fibula and added the skin graft to serve as the roof of my mouth, it all blended and healed together. It's really hard to explain, but you normal folks can move your tongue from the last molar on the right along all of your teeth to the last molar on the left (I know you all just did that) but I cannot because the new gum healed to the inside of the lip. There's probably no point in trying to explain it but the reconstruction involves "releasing" the lip, implanting screws to the new jaw that will ultimately hold hooks that will hold dentures. It is NUTS. And after that they will fix my nose which, as of last week, lost the cartilage between the nostrils so now it's basically a hole in the nose. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried. AND I need a root canal done on one of the two remaining molars I have on the top right AND I need invisilign for the bottom teeth to create and maintain a perfectly aligned bite. Can you believe it? When they told me they needed to make the bottom teeth straighter all I could picture was Tutti from the Facts of Life with her braces and headgear. WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUZZ IS HAPPENING?!?! I alternate between laughing and crying about it because it is just so insane. I am tired of it though, really. Enough already.[...]
