Greetings and salutations! Welcome to 'Slinger's spot. I have brought the blog back. The main reason for it is to keep everyone on "Team Gunslinger" (that's you) as up to date as possible on what is going on with me and my battle to hand cancer a big, fat loss. I won't be the only one posting updates. Katie will be posting from time to time, not only with updates, but her take on things or to possibly fill things in that I have missed.
As you know, I have tongue cancer (it is considered a head and neck cancer). The clinical term is squamous cell carcinoma. This kind of cancer is mostly associated with heavy smokers and drinkers. Needless to say my doctors are at a loss as to why I have this since I don't fall into either category. They also checked a couple of other things, but all those indicators came back negative.
Here is the condensed version of what has gone on so far: Starting in March after a bout with the flu, my neck and tongue were bothering me, but I dealt with it. I thought I was dealing with it pretty good, but in April Katie cornered me and told me that for the last month my attitude was just like it was when I worked 3rd shift; horrible and my breath was even worse. Not just morning breath horrible either. I was told in no uncertain terms that she was making a doctors appointment for me and I was going.
Since I value my life, I went to see our regular doctor, Dr. Digeralamo (Dr. D). You know things are bad when a doctor is saying things like "Oh, my." and "I've never seen anything like this." and calling other doctors in to get another opinion and they are just as lost. Dr. D. referred me to a E.N.T. doc, Dr. Williams. Doc Williams did a biopsy in his office and those results came back as "inconclusive". He then scheduled a bigger biopsy for me to be done as outpatient surgery. That was done June 10th. The results came back June 15th. (June 15th was a heck of a day in our house. Not only did I get the cancer diagnosis, but Lilli's softball team won their league championship that night.). We went back to Doc Williams on June 18th and he scheduled surgery for June 26th. He removed the tumor and some lymph nodes. The tumor was bigger than he thought. It was 4.5 centimeters and reached the midline and root of my tongue. We got the news that the cancer spread to the lymph nodes and that I would need both radiation and chemotherapy on July 2nd. Since then it has been doctor appointment after doctor appointment getting everything in place so we can start the treatments. There are going to be a total of 33-36 radiation treatments daily (Mon-Fri) and 6-8 chemo treatments weekly.
Earlier in the blog I mentioned that I opened this blog back up for everyone on "Team Gunslinger". I'm sure you're wondering just who is on the team. The qualifications for who is on the team is anyone who has offered help, prayers, good thoughts and support. In short, you are on "Team Gunslinger". Yes, I have to fight the battle, but I know that I cannot do it by myself. I am able to fight and have this awesomely positive attitude because of all the love and support from my family and friends. The support I have gotten so far from everyone has truly humbled me and I am deeply touched by it all.
Now, there are a few rules in place for the team. Here they are:
1) No Sad tears. "Are you crying? There's no crying in beating cancer!" The only time we can cry is when the fight is over and we have beaten cancer. Then we can cry all the happy tears we want.
2) No negative attitudes. Team Gunslinger is a positive team with one goal. Beating cancer. You cannot beat cancer feeling sorry for yourself or focusing on the negative. When we run into a negative we will do one of two things: try to turn into a positive. If that can't be done, then we will deal with it when it is time to deal with it.
That's it for now. Like I said earlier, Katie & I will do our best to keep this updated.
Ken
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