It's December!?!

Geez, time is flying along. Already December. That's birthday month AND Christmas month here at the Robinson household. With Sophie's addition last December we now have four immediate family birthdays to celebrate plus my sister's.

Life is going along OK. I just started Monday with a new treatment -- to me -- called Vital Stim. I take my lunch with me to KU Med Center, they attach four electrodes to my neck then crank up the amperage and I spread my lunch eating out to an hour while the electricity is stimulating my swallowing muscles. The objective is to improve my swallowing. It won't improve Saliva production or sensitivity to spices or those type problems, but swallowing itself is supposed to get better. Every weekday for 5-6 weeks then we re-evaluate.

Generally continue to do well. I've had another visit with Dr. Tsue since my last post. He said things were progressing as expected from his standpoint. Still tissue swelling in my throat and a few other issues, but he thought I was "on track".

I'd LIKE someone to be able to give me updated prognosis statistics now that I'm a few good scans down the road and things appear to be progressing well but they can't or, at least, don't. The other thing I've been asking is -- pretending all goes well and I don't die from Cancer -- does the fact that I've had Cancer and/or the treatment that I went through have an effect on my general life expectancy? In other words, on average do people who had chemo/radiation treatment but don't die from cancer live as long as the general population? You'd think some grad student somewhere had compiled that type data somewhere but thus far it's eluded me and, as best I can tell, eluded all the docs at KU Med.

Something nice and uplifting to ponder, eh?

Things are going well for me, though. I still have lots of eating problems, I still seem to get tired pretty easily and I take my fair share of naps in the recliner. But overall good. I think I'm going to have to give up on gaining weight -- at least in the short term -- and go buy some smaller waisted pants. Nothing I have seems to fit so I've been tightening up my belt and dealing with it, expecting to grow back into them but that hasn't happened. I am confident that as soon as I buy some smaller pants that I'll promptly gain every pound back but I'm tired of waiting and wearing baggy bottomed pants.

Happy holidays to everyone. Be safe.

Cliff