The Day That Never Ends

Wednesday was a very long day. Surgery began about 8am. At 12:30 the surgeon called to tell me that it was more extensive than even they had guessed. Cancer was in the mouth, part of the throat and completely through the right side of his neck. When all was done he had to remove the entire right side lower jawbone and put in a metal joint. He removed areas in the right side of the mouth including some of the soft palette and part of the tongue along with the right side of the neck. They used a skin graft from the inside of his lower left forearm for the inside of his mouth and used his pectoral muscle from his right side chest for the area they removed, covered by a large skin graft from his left thigh to cover the muscle. The surgeon told me because of how extensive this surgery was we must cancel the one scheduled for next week. His exact words were “he’s too young to die, we must do everything we can.” He needs to heal from this surgery and immediately start chemo and radiation. When he is through with all of that we can talk about reconstruction and bone transplant. The skin grafts and the rest of the surgery dragged on for 5 more hours. When surgery was complete he was transported to ICU and kept sedated until yesterday morning (Thursday).

Thursday was a very hard day. He was coughing and choking a lot into the tracheotomy. It was extremely distressing for him and upsetting for me to stand there helpless and watch. The ICU nurses were great and said this is what is supposed to happen and he needs to get all this stuff out. They suctioned him regularly and we made it through the day with lots of pain meds. Friday was better. They got him up walking in ICU. He has done so well that they were able to move us to a step down unit. 

He is still very much himself. Furiously scribbling messages to us on the whiteboard when we don’t understand his hand gestures. He wrote on the board to tell the nurse we had been married 26 years. Then pointed to himself and made the hand gesture for talking, then pointed at me. I said are you saying that you’ve talked for 26 years and now it’s my turn? He gave a reluctant nod.

This is so much harder than I imagined. Please pray for his comfort and pain and that he is able to rest and recover and not feel like he is choking. He needs to be strong for the next part of the fight.