OK...finally got out of jail (hospital...same difference to me).

I went in on Thursday about 7am and got released on following Wednesday about 1pm.

Here what was done on 1st day.....

1. Dialation of throat
2. Neck dissection
3. Lumped off about 25% of my lower right tongue (more on this later)
4. Tracheostomy (I'm assuming because of the cutting off of the chunk of the tongue??)
5. Inserted nose feeding tube.

So I wake up in recovery with about a dozen tubes coming out of me from like it seems everyfreakingwhere. I layed there in recovery for about 5 hrs (waiting for ICU room to open up). Finally got moved to ICU and was there about 2 nights.

After moving to the 'floor' (very nice hospital by the way...ranked in top 100). Had a nice private room. Then they stared taking out some tubes 'one at a time'. A drain tube here....an IV there until I was down to only 3 by last day. The Trach, the nose feeding tube, and one of the drainage tubes to neck. Let me give you a little tip on the nose tube if you have it. Always....and I mean ALWAYS grab ahold of it when any nurse comes near you. They stitch that puppy to the end of your nose so it won't pulled out and every time somebody accidentally tugs on it and (and they ALL do)....it hurts like hell. So grab it when any nurse gets within 10 feet of you...give a little slack and hold on for dear life.

A couple/three days into stay....they took me down for x-ray of throat to see how the dialation did, if there were any leaks, etc. Passed that test fine. The next day they took me down for the swallow funtion test (or cookie test as they called it). Did ok with that also so I was qualified to start having 'soft food like scrambled eggs, mashed poatatoes, and of course liquids like Boost, Ensure, etc.

Now...lets talk about the rest of the biggies.

The neck dissection....took out about 30 lymph nodes and ALL tested NEGATIVE...a real good thing.

The tongue surgery was a bit of a surprise but knew it was a possibility going in. My Dr. just didn't like the way it looked (ever after doing a couple biopsys of area...which showed NEGATIVE even). He went ahead and lumped off about 20-25% of my back right tongue...did some more intensive biopsys of piece taken and sure enough found some cancer cells left in loped off area. Glad my Dr. was on the cautios side.

The TRACH was a total uncessary operation imo. I understand maybe the thinking of being very careful with tongue area are after operation....but I was breahting about 95% thru my nose from the get go no problem after operation??? The TRACH caused nothing but a hassle all day long having to be drained about 10 times a day, etc. Was totally glad to lose that thing. There's a HOLE left that Dr says will go away with time.

Get the stitches out Monday on the neck thing.

All in all .... not to shabby.

1. Cancel can't be found anywhere for now
2. Can eat again (even if it is soft stuff) and taste seems to be coming back little by little.
3. Can sleep on my SIDE again......hooray!!!!! To me that's a biggie.....just couldn't get comfortable in hospital bed.

So....about 4 or 5 days ago MUST have the been the BOTTOM to all this????

Now....time to recover by leaps and bounds (hey, I'm thinking positive here).