According to Google, the average age that people get married is between 25 to 30 years of age.
I didn’t fall into that category since I didn’t “tie the knot” until I was 44 years old.
As far as the median age that people buy their first home is concerned, that stat is currently at 47 years of age—way up from the 31 years of age it was in 1981.
In my case, I was a lot closer to the current stat than the earlier one, since I bought our house when I was 44 years old, as well—the same age I was when I got married.
Both of those events occurred in the same year of 2007.
Something else also happened in 2007, along with my other two milestones: I was diagnosed with cancer.
Specifically, Stage 3, esophageal cancer, with growths in my stomach, as well—so there was some spreading of the disease throughout my innards.
Traci, my wife, must’ve thought, “This can’t be happening! We just got married, bought a house, and are just starting out our lives together! And now, I’m going to be a widow already?”
That’s what my surgeon told me : that I’d likely be dead in less than a year, at the rate the cancer was spreading.
But here I am, 13 years later, and still among the living—although with this nasty new pandemically-affected world we’re living in, I often wish I hadn’t made it.
But wishes aside, here I am.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. THE SYMPTOMS
II. THE DIAGNOSIS / PROGNOSIS
-A. THE UPPER G.I. SCOPE OF THE TUMOR
III. THE TREATMENT
-A. THE CHEMOTHERAPY
—1. THE CHEMO MEDICINES AND THEIR SIDE EFFECTS
—2. THE MEDICINES TO COUNTERACT THE CHEMO’S SIDE EFFECTS
-B. THE RADIATION
—1. RADIATION’S SIDE EFFECTS
——a. SORE THROAT
——b. DENTAL PROBLEMS
—2. MY “TATTOOS”
-C. THE SURGERY
—1. PRE-SURGERY : ERRONEOUS ASSUMPTIONS AND CONFIDENCE
—2. SURGERY : MY TWO HEART ATTACKS AND ITEMS SURGICALLY REMOVED
-D. THE SMOKING CESSATION PROGRAM
IV. THE POST-SURGERY RECOVERY : A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT ME!
-A. MY WEIGHT
-B. MY DIET
-C. MY THERMOLOGICAL COMFORT ZONE
I. THE SYMPTOMS
How did all of this commotion get started in the first place?
Well, it all started when I began to choke on food—twice!
The first time was when we grilled up some boneless chicken breasts on our gas grill.
While going through the normal routine and chewing and swallowing, the swallowing part presented some problems.
I couldn’t get the food down my gullet all the way. It would get stuck mid-way, and as I tried to push it down with water, the water, itself, came back up rather violently, with the food still lodged in my pipe.
Fortunately, it wasn’t my wind pipe, since that would have made breathing impossible, and I’d probably would not have lasted beyond a minute or two—in other words, I’d likely would have expired by the time my wife finished dialing 9-1-1.
Instead of “Send me an ambulance, quick!”, it would have been “Send over the funeral home’s herst.”
In any case, eventually I gave up trying to get it down, and somehow succeeded in regurgitating the un-swallowed portion into the garbage can, and being so exhausted from the unsuccessful attempt to get it down, I no longer had an appetite to eat anymore, although I was still able to swallow liquids, once the food was dislodged.
A few weeks later, the same thing happened with some hot dogs : I started choking on them, too, as they wouldn’t go all the way down the pipe, and I had to dislodge them with several “dry heaves” before orally expelling them into the garbage can.
“No more friggin’ chicken or hot dogs for you until you get that checked out!” my wife exclaimed, understandably concerned that something unseen was occurring inside of me.
I. THE DIAGNOSIS / PROGNOSIS
So, I made an appointment with my primary, who asked me a battery of questions, including the expected one of “Do you smoke?”.
The answer, at that time, was, of course, “Yes!”, and after checking my vitals and groping around my neck area, she wrote me a referral to go to the nearest urgent care facility that was equipped with the necessary equipment to further investigate the possible causes of my swallowing problems.
They did a CT scan and found some anomalies that warranted more tests, so they sent me to a my gastrointestinal specialist who did an upper G.I. scope and took some pictures and found the likely cause of my swallowing problems : a tumor in my esophagus that almost completely closed off the pathway when it was misbehaving at its worst, and otherwise allowing smaller particles of food to pass through when it was in “dereliction of its evil duties” to make swallowing food or water an impossibility.
A. THE UPPER G.I. SCOPE OF THE TUMOR
In the upper left corner is the monster that was causing all my problems. It kind of resembles the shape of an embryo, doesn’t it?
In the upper right corner, the monster looks larger, because the camera is closer, and the pressure of the camera “squeezing by” shows the camera’s passing actually dilating the passage, creating the impression that there’s an opening when there really wasn’t.
The lower right picture shows the camera past the point of the tumor, where although it’s wide open, was also the pathway for the tumor to spread into my stomach, which it did.
One thing was for sure : that tumor could not stay; it had to be removed, since it was only going to grow larger and larger
Then, it was off to a surgeon, who said to me, something along the lines of, “If we don’t get that removed A.S.A.P., you’ll likely be dead in less than 12 months!”
Then, prior to surgery, we needed to get that tumor to stop growing in the first place, and to do that we needed some form of medicine to make that happen.
III. THE TREATMENT
No “one, single therapy” was going to suffice to “curing” me of my disease.
According to the guidelines of the medical/ pharmacological fields, there was going to be :
[a] chemo to help fight any cancerous cells;
[b] radiation to help shrink the tumors into not growing at all; and
[c] surgery, to remove whatever was left over from the bombardment of chemicals and radiation (i.e., remaining cancerous tissues ).
—–A. THE CHEMOTHERAPY
Welcome to chemotherapy.
———-1. THE CHEMO MEDICINES AND THEIR SIDE EFFECTS
I had two drugs prescribed to me :
[1] Xeloda® ( pronounced zǝ lō’ dǝ )
- it’s generic name : Capecitabine, pronounced kāp sī ‘ tǝ bean )
…was a pill that I swallowed, at home, or wherever ; and
[2] Eloxatin® ( pronounced ē laaks’ ǝ tǝn )
- it’s generic name : Oxylaplatin pronounced aak sĭl ǝ plăt ĭn )
…was an infusion (i.e., injection), which could only be administered in a physician’s office or hospital setting.
I had a boss who was diagnosed with cancer ( two years before I was ) , although his diagnosis came way too late, since his lung cancer had metastasized into his bone marrow and other organs, and he passed away somewhere around a year ( give or take a month) after his initial diagnosis.
In any case, he told me something that I later discovered to be very true.
Specifically, what he said was, that after he got his initial does of chemo, he “felt nothing”; But….
A day, or so, later, it hit him “like a train” : he had no energy; he was nauseated; and he had no appetite.
I can tell you from first hand experience, he was not lying.
My experience was also along the exact same lines : my first 24 hours after my initial infusion were essentially normal—I felt no negative effects.
But, somewhere in the middle of my second day, it hit me “like a train”, as well.
I was lethargic, nauseated, and I had zero appetite.
Moreover, as the weeks rolled by, I was also constantly cold—a side effect of the infusion, Eloxatin.
In fact, my boss walked in on me in the conference room ( with the door closed, of course; but I couldn’t use the men’s room, since someone was already in there with the door locked ) one afternoon, spreading the heat-generating Ben Gay aching-muscle medicine on my legs to make me feel warm—I was so cold, that it felt like it was in my bone marrow. I was that cold. I couldn’t escape the shivers.
In fact, the manufacturer of the medicine provided gloves and a scarf to protect patients using the medicine from the cold; especially, the gloves, which were essentially mandatory, in that I was warned that grabbing cold items, say, out of a refrigerator, or perhaps, the metal handle of a pipe wrench in an unheated warehouse ( where I worked ) , or an outside door knob on a cold winter’s day, could cause a tingling ( e.g., when your hand feels like it fell asleep, with that “thousand pins and needles” feeling ) sensation in my fingertips that could become a permanent neuropathy.
Who wants that for the rest of their life?
I was also told by my boss ( well after my treatment; perhaps even a year later ) that throughout the duration of my chemo, I made lots of mistakes in my paperwork, but they overlooked my propensity to make those mistakes because they knew it was the mental lethargy resulting from the medicine that was causing those mistakes, and not anything to do with me as a worker, per se.
Now, that’s an understanding boss to say the least.
———-2. THE MEDICINES TO COUNTERACT THE CHEMO’S SIDE EFFECTS
Marinol
Although my oncologist prescribed me Marinol® (the pill version of Cannabis), I found that the smoked plant version worked better, and was far easier to acquire, than waiting for an official prescription being called in by a licensed physician.
Specifically, the pill was only to be taken according to the directions on the label.
Once swallowed, it did not offer any “immediate” relief; nor did I experience any noticeable hunger in the “munchies” sense; and although it did “numb” the nausea, to a certain degree, it, by no means, wiped it out in it’s totality.
Cannabis
In contrast, though, for me, my personal experience was such that smoking Cannabis beat Marinol in every metric : it could be taken at any time; and it worked much faster on both hunger and nausea.
Thus, for example, if Traci said she was making dinner and that it would be ready by 7:00PM, if I took two, one-hitters by 6:00PM to 6:15PM, I actually had a touch of the munchies, by the time dinner was ready.
I didn’t have to force myself to eat. It wasn’t a labor of chewing and chewing and chewing, trying to find the desire to swallow.
I actually had an appetite, ( i.e. , the munchies ), and I actually looked forward to eating ( despite the possibility of choking—so I made sure I chopped my food up into tiny bits to make it easier to get past that blockage in my esophagus ).
I really can’t say that about Marinol, though.
And where nausea was concerned, smoked Cannabis worked even faster—much faster on nausea than Marinol.
We’re talking minutes, not hours!
If I was experiencing nausea at any given moment, two hits and within five minutes(!) ( not 30 minutes; not two hours; not four hours; but literally five minutes ) there was zero nausea.
I mean, how could any patient say “no” to that?
Even though I had Marinol pills prescribed me, they sat in the medicine cabinet un-swallowed and unused.
My oncologist eventually—within the first two months of my treatment—stopped prescribing me the Marinol, when I inadvertently let it be known that I wasn’t taking the pills since I was electing to utilize the natural plant version instead.
I didn’t actually tell them, per se, but rather they found out when one of his nurses was about to take my vitals and blood pressure ( which they always did prior to going into the chemo room, where there were recliners to sit in, while they pumped a bag of infusion in through my port) and she asked me to remove my sweatshirt, so she could take my blood pressure, and what-not.
As I was removing my outer-most pull-over hoodie sweatshirt, my Bic lighter fell out of the “kangaroo pouch” and it landed on the floor.
“You’re not still smoking, are you?!” she asked me with a sense of deep concern in her voice, as she saw me bend over to retrieve the lighter from the floor..
“Not cigarettes.” I replied, with an embarrassed smile on my face.
What happened next actually occurred ( although a friend of mine, who was also a chemo patient, but who ultimately ended up passing away, did not believe me; he thought I was embellishing the story, but I wasn’t; it actually happened! ).
When I replied, “Not cigarettes”, she grinned, shook her head, opened the exam room door, stepped out into the hallway, and shouted to the doctor , whose office was at the end of the hallway, “No need for the Marinol; he has his own supply!”
I swear on a stack of Bibles! I couldn’t believe it, and I could easily see why it does seem a bit exaggerated, but it’s not.
A few moments later, just prior to going into the chemo room, my doctor came into the exam room to do his thing of looking down my throat, and feeling my lymph nodes, and all that other diagnostic stuff, and he wanted to clarify what my intentions were : did I want the Marinol, or did I want to see my corner pot dealer?
He simply did not see any point in double-dosing me ( i.e., prescribing me the Marinol, on top of me using the all-natural plant version at the same time—NOR did he tell me to stop the plant version, either. He was completely supportive of my decision either way I went. He simply asked me to make a choice between the two, and he’d be glad to prescribe me the Marinol if I chose to not use the plant, or I could continue using the plant and he’d stop writing the prescriptions for the pharmaceutical version ). I chose the latter option. and he was completely fine with that decision.
In fact, he signed my medical Cannabis form, but I never processed it for reasons that I could do an entire post on, all by itself, which I might still end up doing.
But for this post, I’m not going to go into those details.
Back then, recreational was not legal yet, so, I elected to just score on the black market.
But the short and long of it was that Cannabis worked!; and it worked much better than the Marinol did for me!
—–B. THE RADIATION
Unlike the chemo treatments, which usually took an hour to perform ( since dripping liquids being pumped in through an I.V. bag was like continental drift in comparison) the radiation treatments were complete within minutes.
It almost felt like it wasn’t worth showing up for the treatments since it wouldn’t seem that there would be much benefit to treatments that took less time to perform, than it did to order food at the drive-thru at McDonald’s on a slow day.
———-1. RADIATION’S SIDE EFFECTS
But like chemo, radiation, too, had it’s side effects, among which were : [1] a sore throat; and [2] subsequent dental problems.
Sore Throat
A treatment for that discomfort came not from the department that performed the radiation treatments, but rather from my oncologist’s office.
They gave me (what I later learned was a very common mixture used widely by many physicians working with certain cancer patients ) a three-way concoction that had codeine, lidocaine, and a third drug with a name that escapes me at the moment.
The medicine was designed to minimize the discomfort associated with treatments such as mine.
Dental Problems
Another aspect of my radiation treatments is that they seemed to have exacerbated whatever problems I had going on in the realm of dental health.
Like many, if not most, people, I had my fair share of fillings, root canals, and extractions. So, my mouth didn’t exactly qualify for modeling jobs in the dental health field.
Although I brushed every day, I admit that I didn’t always floss, except when I ate meat, and bits of food got stuck in between my teeth, which was always bothersome enough to warrant yanking off a length of waxed dental string to remove those irritating nuisances.
But, no meat, or irritations? No flossing.
Bad policy!
Moreover, never having any disposable income (having earned so little income—barely over minimum wage—in life that I always had to struggle to find money to put gas in the tank to get to work ) I only went to the dentist for urgent care —e.g., a sore tooth or an abscess—but never for routine checkups. There just wasn’t any disposable funds to do that with.
Consequently, during my weakest period of my life ( i.e., during chemo and radiation treatments) my dental health really took a dive as was manifested when I lost two teeth—without an official extraction.
How so?
I’m glad you asked.
Being on chemo, there was a constant nasty taste in my mouth, so I always had a bottle of Crest® Oral Health mouth wash in my bag to rid me of that nastiness that I just can’t describe since there’s nothing in nature to compare it to.
Any flavor that would help mask that chemo-related unpleasantness in my mouth was always a welcomed offering.
So, for example, at many banks, when you walk up to one of their teller windows and you make a deposit or cash a check, or whatever, there’s often a container with some form of candy for the customer to take and enjoy.
At my bank, the container was filled with suckers and lollipops.
On not one, but two, separate occasions, I took one of those lollipops to enjoy on my ride home from the bank.
The first time, I was on the highway, driving around the “speed limit” (yeah, right—and if you believe that, I got swampland in Arizona to sell you, LOL) and I popped that lollipop into my mouth, sucking and biting down on it, with the radio jamming tunes, and I’m in my own little world.
We’re all familiar with our own mouths and how things sound when we’re crunching down on something. We can tell when the sound of the crunch is a “good” one—and when it’s not.
This was one of those not good-sounding crunches.
I grabbed the stick of the lollipop to pull it out of my mouth to see if there was anything ominous-looking about the lollipop itself, but….
I couldn’t pull it out of my mouth : the lollipop was stuck to the tooth.
I kept tugging on the stick to no avail; it wasn’t coming out.
“Uh, oh! This ain’t good!” I thought to myself as I drove at highway traffic speed while trying to engage in an oral examination by looking into my mouth in the rear-view mirror, which means my eyes are not on the road.
Now, my mouth seems to be watering excessively and I’m swallowing unnatural amounts of saliva being generated by whatever unidentified causes.
Almost in a panic, since I couldn’t give my mouth the attention it needed, I couldn’t wait to get to a point where I could safely pull over and check out what was going on in my mouth.
But I was actually almost home. I was about three miles ( and two unbelievably long traffic lights, once I was off the expressway ) from pulling out in front of the house, where I could then run to the bathroom, and give my mouth the attention it so badly needed.
But, at the same time, the lollipop being stuck to my tooth wasn’t something that I could calmly deal with until I got home. I couldn’t help but tug on the lollipop’s stick.
Suddenly, I heard something crack, and it didn’t sound like a “crunch”, but rather something breaking—and it didn’t sound like the lollipop.
I gave another tug, and I felt not only the lollipop move, but I felt a suction at the gum level, and now the lollipop had moved to a position where it was higher in my mouth, and I could not close my jaw all the way.
Now, my mouth was salivating even more, and I had to keep closing my lips around the stick to keep the excessive saliva from leaking out and cascading all over my shirt.
“This is a nightmare!” I kept thinking to myself, as the distance from home seemed to be lengthening, like in one of those dreams, where the door at the end of the hallway keeps getting farther and farther away no matter how fast you run.
In this case, people were tapping their brakes and braking for hallucinations; putting on their “left” turn signals—only to swerve into the right lane at the very last moment; trucks were suddenly downshifting and braking, when there were no vehicles ahead of them to warrant the change in gears or speed.
Anything that could slow me down was happening right before my very eyes!
“WTF! Everyone get the f— out of my way, you stupid S.O.B.’s!” was my attitude as I swerved like a madman around all those jokers and rushed home to address the emergency going on inside my mouth.
Just short of the exit ramp to get off the expressway, my last tug on the stick, removed the lollopop—and the tooth it was stuck to.
The whole tooth ( an un-crowned, dead, root-canal’d tooth) was stuck to the lollipop, but only a tiny amount of blood came with it.
I pulled out in front of my house and ran inside straight to the bathroom, to look at the inside of my mouth in the dimly-lit mirror.
Although the I felt almost no pain at the point of the initial “extraction”, once I saw the mildly-bloodied hole in the gum, I started to feel enough pain to warrant taking four 200-milligram ibuprofens (home-made “prescription” strength).
The second time a lollipop extracted another tooth, it was pretty much ditto of the first time : same highway; same speed; same flavored lollipop; same panicked reaction; same idiots getting in my way as I rushed home, etc.
Almost deja vu.
The only difference between the two incidents, was the first one took place during my treatment, and the second occurrence, was post-treatment.
Needless to say, I don’t suck on ( much less, bite down on ) lollipops anymore.
I now sport a big, bushy moustache to camouflage my otherwise jack-o-lantern smile.
———-2. MY “TATTOOS”
Also, one other possibly noteworthy fact was that although , officially, I have no tattoos, technically, I do, in the sense that for the radiology technicians to aim their weapons precisely, they gave me three tiny green dots : one near my solar plexus, and the other two, on my sides somewhere below my arm pits that they’d aim their radiation “beams” at.
So, if some tattoo aficionado ever asks me where my tattoos are, I could remove my shirt and show him, but, I’m afraid, he’ll be straining his eye, since the dots are so tiny, a magnifying glass might be needed to see them.
But they’re there.
—–C. THE SURGERY
Who doesn’t enjoy having their skin slit open with a razor-sharp scalpel and having their innards surgically removed, and then having the wound stapled shut?
Me! That’s who!
———-1. PRE-SURGERY : ERRONEOUS ASSUMPTIONS AND CONFIDENCE
Before being rolled into an actual operating room, I was on a gurney out in some hallway, where I couldn’t help but notice how cold it was in there, and it wasn’t the chemo acting this time.
One could almost, but not quite, see one’s own breath.
I would later learn that such tweaking of the immediate environment was intentional, since cold rooms inhibit the incubation of germs—the most unwelcome entity in an operating room where sterility is of paramount importance.
So, cold is good; warm, bad!
Also, there’s an episode of M*A*S*H, where Doctor Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce ( played by Alan Alda ) talks about a wounded soldier that had (i.e., pre-sugery) displayed a flattering amount of confidence in his surgical skills.
I forget his line verbatim, but it was something along the lines of “…and he gave me this look of confidence…”
Well, that’s exactly how I responded when I saw my surgeon approach me in the hallway prior to surgery.
So, wherever you are, Dev Sharma, thank you.
I simply had no worries about the situation that I was about to face—although, in retrospect, the situation did present unforeseen complications no one anticipated.
Moreover, since I hadn’t had any surgery since I was a kid when I had my appendix and my tonsils removed, I couldn’t remember any of the details pertaining to any post-surgical discomfort or recovery time.
In that fog of ignorance, I woefully underestimated the negatives of the aftermath of my surgery.
Specifically, just before I took my absence of leave from work to go have that surgical procedure done, I remember telling my boss, “See you in a couple of weeks!”
A couple of weeks, huh?
Sure thing, Floyd.
I didn’t return until a minimum of two months had passed—and even that was premature.
The only reason I came back that soon was because the only other guy in the office, a man named, Tad, had, himself, left for surgery—in this case, a double knee operation, and my boss, Mike, would’ve had no one to help him.
So, I returned, under a limited-duties capacity —i.e., I couldn’t lift anything heavy, which was defined as anything heavier than air.
———-2. SURGERY : MY TWO HEART ATTACKS AND ITEMS SURGICALLY REMOVED
Specifically, I had not one, but two, heart attacks while on the gurney in surgery.
What caused them?
Well, according to Doctor Sharma, the radiation treatments had literally fused my esophagus to a portion of my heart, and when they ( there were two surgeons, actually—whether that’s a requirement, or just good medicine, I’m not sure) tried to slice the fused portion of the esophagus away from the heart, that triggered the heart attacks (plural).
Plus, I was on that table for 19 hours!
They had to have taken a “cigarette break” or two throughout that time frame—I simply can’t see accuracy being a component of any procedure where fatigue would likely have reared it’s ugly head.
So, what did they do throughout this marathon 19-hour operation?
They removed four things :
[1] The lower three-fourths of my esophagus—including my LES (lower esophageal sphincter : the valve that keeps stomach acids from percolating back up into the esophagus ) ;
[2] The top half of my stomach ;
[3] my spleen; and
[4] four lymph nodes.
Oh, and my sense of humor and my love for music—for about a year. I didn’t even pick up my guitar or find enjoyment in anything over the course of the following 15 months , or so.
—–D. THE SMOKING CESSATION PROGRAM
I actually quit smoking cigarettes within the first two months of my chemo and radiation treatments.
It wasn’t as though I was officially enrolled in some program, or anything like that, but rather, I simply couldn’t handle how crappy smoking made me feel during my chemo and radiation treatments; and believe me, I tried to quit smoking several times before ( i.e., cold turkey; hypnosis, and medicinal injections; step-down method; voodoo; whatever I thought would do the trick ) but without any success.
Although I was by no means a “chain smoker”, I definitely smoked around a pack a day ( just over or under—depending on whether it was a stressful day or a relaxed one; the former contributing to more smoking); and back in the day, in my twenties and early thirties, when I was still in my bar-hopping days, I’d smoke closer to two packs if I went out drinking all night.
Plus, I was a “full flavor” (i.e. full strength ) smoker—none of that “light” nonsense for me. When I took a drag, I wanted my ass kicked by a dose of nicotine that would make an elephant dizzy.
My normal brand was Marlboro® “Red“—or “Muds“as they were often referred to as; and, I wanted them as long as possible. So, I smoked “100’s” instead of “Kings”, although Kings were a bit stronger, which I liked, but it seemed like a mere four or five drags, and the cigarette was done; but the 100’s gave me that extra two or three drags that I wanted.
Furthermore, my parents smoked Pall Mall Red (non-menthol) non-filters, which were even stronger, and I really enjoyed one of those when I’d stop by their house and my mom would make one of her awesome Sunday evening dinners of Chicken and Dumplings ( and post-meal cigarettes were always the most enjoyable ones ) and I’d sit in one of the recliners and smoking that cigarette like I was toking on a joint or something.
So, I was not exactly a “light” smoker, and getting me to quit was about as easy as getting a conservative Republican to embrace the ideas of free healthcare and college for illegal immigrants, and making taxpayers ( who did NOT receive free healthcare or college) pay for it out of their paychecks.
Sacrilege!
But chemo and radiation succeeded where official smoking cessation programs failed miserably.
Another contributing element was the fact that I was a non-menthol smoker, whereas my wife favored menthols.
Specifically, she was smoking Virginia Slim® Menthol Lights at the time I was going through my treatments.
Although I quit officially buying cigarettes, I still had “the urge”.
Just because one needs to quit smoking, doesn’t mean the addiction suddenly and magically disappears. The withdrawal symptoms were in hyper mode, and my ” Jonesin’ ” made me think I wanted to smoke a cigarette the size of my one of my legs.
However, inhaling tobacco smoke when your lungs feel slightly raw from radiation treatments, tends to simulate the sensation of touching raw skin under a punctured blister, which, to say it “stings” is an understatement.
On top of the stinging sensation was the chemo factor : being queasy just from the chemo alone, made smoking tobacco unmistakably more contributory toward more overall discomfort.
Thus, chemo plus radiation equals one hell of a smoking cessation program.
The Price Factor
It worked! I don’t smoke anymore; and, at the prices shown below, I’m thankful I don’t. A carton would cost well over $100 dollars.
I remember, back in the 1970’s, hearing people say, “When cigarettes are a dollar a pack, that’s when I quit!”
Boy, if only they could see these prices! LOL.
When I quit smoking cigarettes in 2007, Illinois’ prices were somewhere in the $6.00-and-up price range for brand names, and maybe a dollar less for certain generics.
But living on the border between Illinois and Indiana, I never bought smokes again in Illinois, and I was getting Charter® brand ( Speedway’s own private labeled brand) for around $3.00 a pack.
And there was a website, allourbutts.com (on an Indian reservation somewhere in upstate New York ) where I bought a few cartons online at $14.95 a carton.
But post-quitting?
I forget the exact year, but one day, (long after buying my last pack) I was driving west-bound on 95th Street in Hickory Hills ( I think?) and there was a Walgreens store that had a banner outside that read something along the lines of “Marlboro’s only $95.00 a carton!”
I almost slammed on the brakes in the middle of traffic to re-read that sign to make sure I hadn’t misread it.
“Ninety five dollars?! For a Carton?! Wow! What happened there?!” I thought in shock at how much prices had increased in only a few short years.
The Addiction Factor Was Intentional
But it’s long since known that tobacco companies have deliberately spiked their products with all kinds of chemicals that increase the addictive factor exponentially.
On more than one occasion, I’ve seem assertions that nicotine is more addictive than heroin! Whether or not that’s true I’ve never actually verified; but being that I could not quit via normal methods , and my wife has twice returned to smoking after briefly quitting due to pulmonary problems, I can certainly believe that tobacco is definitely one of the most addictive drugs known to the common consumer!
There is no legitimate reason to doubt that contention.
IV. THE POST-SURGERY RECOVERY : A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT ME!
There are many things about me that have changed post-treatment. Among them are : [1] My weight; [2] My diet ; and [3] My thermological comfort zone.
—–A. My Weight
At the time of my diagnosis, I would have been officially defined as morbidly obese being only 5’6″ in height while also being 260 pounds in weight.
Although, I have to admit, that I don’t put too much faith in those kinds of metrics since I had a boss, who was a body builder who was all muscle, at slightly over 200 pounds, but who still, by definition, was defined as “borderline obese”.
You get the impression that they’re talking about some porker who’s as round as human-sized volley ball, when, the actual picture is some guy who looks a bit like a miniature Arnold Schwarzenegger.
What a total misrepresentation of reality! And that’s the official guidelines to assessing whether someone’s “obese” or not. Wow!
Consequently, though, seeing such deliberately skewed misrepresentations of reality, I would view many such assessments with a high degree of suspicion given their propensity to use a term like “obese” ( which automatically—and erroneously, in many cases— conjures up images of fat or cellulite or other “undesirable” characteristics) to describe someone whose weight is largely muscle, not fat, and who was healthy and strong enough to where he could probably lift the rear end of a small car if needed.
At the peak of my treatment, I lost more than half my weight, and was down to 125 pounds—I was literally half the man I used to be.
Nowadays, though, I’m back up in the 160-pound range, which, according to google, puts me a whopping four pounds over the 128-to-156-pound range.
I’m sure, by some unethical person’s standards, those four pounds put me somewhere in the “obese” range.
Oh, shame on you, whoever you are.
—–B. My Diet
I’ve never been put on any kind of official calorie-restrictive diet, since there has never been a need to, given that I don’t eat that much. My appetite is not what it used to be.
Specifically, pre-cancer, I would eat cereal in what would look like a “mixing” bowl to some people.
Although I haven’t officially investigated any comparisons between what was officially considered a “serving size” and what I actually ate, I would feel comfortable in asserting that my typical bowl of cereal was likely a three-serving helping in a mixing bowl—with added sugar and fruit, such as bananas, strawberries, or blueberries.
The same goes for ice cream! Same bowl! With chocolate, strawberry, or caramel syrup added.
My typical peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich looked more like a Burger King Whopper!
All my fast food lunches and dinners were “supersized” with double burgers, biggie fries, and a vat of Coke or Pepsi, whatever they had on tap.
I could go over an entire menu of options that I over-indulged in, resulting in my five-by-five dimensions, but, I’m sure, you get the picture.
That description merely describes the quantities of what I ate—i.e., how much I ate.
What it doesn’t elaborate on is what I ate—which, according to most people, would likely be deemed “junk food”, which would be a fair assessment.
As far as my diet is concerned, I’ve always been a super picky eater, all my life.
I’m strictly, hamburgers, hot dogs, pizza, fried chicken or fish fillets, potatoes, french fries, processed foods like individual frozen pizzas, PBJ’s, bacon, pork sausage, beef sandwiches, and the like.
One thing you’d never see me eat, though, would be…wait for it…
A salad…of any kind!
Why not?
There are two things in a salad : [1] vegetables; and [2] some kind of vinegar-based condiment, such as salad dressings .
I ABSOLUTELY DETEST BOTH.
I tried to eat a piece of lettuce one time, and I chewed and chewed and chewed, and eventually spit it out into a garbage can. I just couldn’t understand the attraction. It’s like eating a large leaf with thick veins. Yuck! Not for me.
Nor can I stand raw onions! My father used to slice one up and put it on a hamburger. Yuck! I couldn’t do that, either. BUT…I can eat cooked/sauteed onions on a White Castle hamburger, but if there’s too many, I’ll scrape off the excess and toss that in the garbage, as well.
What about tomatoes? Again, raw tomatoes, no way. Nasty! But if they’re cooked in a stew or a goulash or a similar dish, I can deal with it.
Carrots? Again, not raw. If they’re chopped into tiny pieces and thrown into a potato soup, or a peas-and-carrots side dish, they’re do-able; but I would never go out of my way to acquire them.
Other salad ingredients such as cucumbers, radishes, spinach, celery, etc, are also on my “that’s offensive” list.
One time, about 20 years ago, at an Olive Garden restaurant (which is not one of my favorite eateries; I was there only because I was with other people) I saw a woman sprinkle grated parmesan cheese on a salad, and the smell wafted over to me, and I almost blew my cookies the smell was so unpleasant to me, that I scooted away several chairs to get away from the stench.
Then, the other end of the salad paradigm : vinegar-based products such as salad dressings, and I’ve seen some people put plain vinegar on their salads.
That’s when I go running for the hills!
So, nature offers me very few alternatives to foods to eat, and thus, processed foods are the only ones that I can eat without being turned off in some way.
Also, one thing that I do differently now, is that I frequently eat my desserts before my meal, since that makes me feel more satisfied sooner, and I’m not likely to overeat on my main meal—i.e., I’m not likely to have a second serving of something, since that’s very likely to cause me post-meal digestive problems, such as nausea.
But now, post-cancer, pretty much all foods get me nauseated to some extent.
There are very few items that I can eat that are not likely to cause me some level of nausea (like certain potato chips–yes, they are technically “junk food” , but if they’re not making me nauseated, I’d prefer eating that to something “healthy” that does cause nausea).
Since nausea is my “new normal”, I’m very uncomfortable with dining out.
For example, when I got hired at a job about three years ago, the Vice President of Operations, and my sales manager took me out to an Applebees for a “Let’s-welcome-our-new-employee-to-the-company” lunch—and I was dreading every single second of it. But I couldn’t tell them that, since that would look like I was somehow ungrateful for the job, which I was not.
Being far more picky than even the pickiest teenager, there is almost nothing on commercial menus that I like; and that is not an exaggeration.
Applebee’s was no exception : I was the last one to pick something from the menu because literally, absolutely nothing appealed to me. If I remember correctly, I asked the waitress if I could get a certain chicken entree without all the garbage (i.e., no spices or sauces; just plain grilled chicken) that most people would find pleasant, and she said it was possible.
Judging from the looks on the faces of my new bosses, when I made the unusual request, I had to make up a story about certain things causing my post-cancer digestive system problems so that they could find some degree of acceptance in my unorthodox choices.
As far as the foods that I do like, I am getting better at digesting those foods that normally do cause nausea, by experiencing less nausea. But the decrease is so gradual it’s hardly noticeable.
For example, pre-cancer, I would have to drink a large glass of milk to feel “satisfied” after a meal.
Thus, for instance, what would make me feel more satisfied (full ) :
[a] two sandwiches with water or soda; ?; or
[b] one sandwich with milk?
Option ‘b’ would make me feel more satisfied, since the “coating” of my stomach from the milk seemed to fulfill whatever unwritten digestive requirement my body had.
Heck, even a third sandwich or a post-meal dessert would not even come close to the satisfaction I experienced with milk coating my stomach with only one sandwich eaten.
Nowadays, though, I can only have about four ounces of milk before nausea sets in.
It’s been 12 years now since my surgery, and I’m just now starting to be able to eat small bowls of cereal, and an occasional milk shake—a very tiny one.
I have, on occasion, tested the waters, and went beyond my normal “maximums” just to see if there were any negative results, and so far, there have been in every single case.
I’m not there yet; and my guess? I never will be. I might get better in small increments; but I’ll never again be able to do the things I did pre-cancer.
For a long time, when it came to tacos, I’d eat only the meat with some shredded cheese mixed in. I could not eat it with a taco shell—something about the shells made put me “over the top”; and even the meat alone, still gets me nauseated if I eat even a little too much.
Even peanut butter, which I’ve always loved all my life, causes nausea.
In fact, as I write these very words, I’m trying to digest the second sandwich ( the first sandwich eaten last night) of my very first jar of all-natural peanut butter which does not contain the hydrogenated vegetable oil that ( I assume) all regular commercial peanut butters do contain.
Although I’m not overtly nauseated like I would be with normal peanut butter, I am feeling a bit queasy, but I’m not sure if that’s merely psychosomatic in anticipation of forthcoming nausea, or if it’s an actual case of nausea, but only to a much milder extent.
Either way, the nausea factor is not “zero”.
Of course, ALL nausea is an easy fix : two hits of Cannabis, and “what nausea?”
Unfortunately, being currently unemployed, I have to take drug tests, and even in a state where Cannabis is legal for both medical and recreational use, it’s still a no-no in the realm of the job market.
If you test positive, you can kiss that job offer goodbye.
When you have a mortgage to pay, you just can’t take that chance.
Some jobs only have a pre-employment “whiz quiz”, while others call for ongoing randoms, particularly where federal law dictates it, such as CDL drivers licenses and public servants such as police and fire departments, and anything pertaining to to The Department of Transportation jobs, and, I’m sure, countless others not mentioned here.
So, I’m “required” to choose between : [a] having NO RELIEF; or [b] REMAIN UNEMPLOYED if I’m going to take my medicine.
Yes, like I said, I do have my oncologists signature on my medical Cannabis form, but handing it in for processing has multiple drawbacks, at least, in the state of Illinois, where I don’t want to be put on a list that no sane person wants to find his or her name.
Again, that story is for another post entirely.
Suffice it to say, I’m a “professional” at dealing with nausea every single day!
—–C. MY THERMOLOGICAL COMFORT ZONE
Finally, I’m always cold—and I always will be, according to both, my primary and my oncologist.
In both cases, they knew what my question was even before I finished asking it, which was, “Will I always be cold?”
I got as far as , “Will I always be..”
“Yep.” was their answer because they knew patients treated with Eloxatin® suffer some kind of change or damage to their thyroids that permanently sends their brains the erroneous message that they’re cold, even when it’s warm outside.
Thus, even in the summer, it’s not uncommon to see me with long sleeves on, because I’m only a few degrees away from feeling “chilled”; I can always roll up my sleeves if I’m feeling a bit on the warm side ( and that does happen when I’m exerting lots of energy, such as when I lifting boxes or something heavy ) but I can’t roll them down if I’m suddenly chilled, and all I have on is a short-sleeved tee shirt.
But that’s who I am : I’m constantly nauseated and/or cold!
Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?
No?
You’re right. It’s not.
But, nauseated and cold, here I am!