For me, I was more relieved that the cancer had been removed and was now out of my body. And sheer drive & determination to get out of the hospital and back to my normal life as quickly as possible. Through the window, from my hospital bed I could see out the waterway where my teammates and competitors were training in outrigger canoes and dragonboats, and it just drove me crazy knowing I would be off the water waiting for my forearm flap, the "new" tongue, the skin graft on my thigh & the hole they had punctured in my throat for the trach to heal.

Very early on in the process (long before the surgery itself), I decided that there wasn't much I could do to improve my situation by worrying about it. It was the doctors, nurses, techies and other people fighting along with me that were going to get that garbage out of my body, then zap me with their multimillion dollar ray gun in case any stray little buggers got away. Yeah, it was horrible and terrible. It hurt and it made me extremely uncomfortable. But it happened. I wanted my life back.