June 27 - And the fun continues. Had my pre-op with the plastic surgeon this morning and my pre-op with the hospital this afternoon. I honestly thought these would be run of the mill appointments. Say 'hi' to the plastic surgeon and have him review one more time what's going to go on, get a little blood taken at the hospital, whatever, no biggie. Ahhhh, to be so unsuspecting.........

So, first I met with the plastic surgeon's PA. She had lots of new info to pass along. It turns out they're going to need to trach me for surgery and it will stay in until the swelling goes down far enough for me to breath normally. I'm fine with this, a little slit in the throat for a number of days, I can deal. For some reason my buddy JT felt this was the most horrifying revelation yet which made me laugh. I guess we all have our different triggers!

She also told me that there is a chance they will need to split my lip and chin so they can move my face over far enough to get at the tumor. I'm sorry but THIS was MY trigger. You would think peeling half your face off is something they might have mentioned a little sooner?!? She placated me by saying if it wasn't mentioned before it's likely not going to need to be done. I now have all of my fingers and toes crossed for that, and that alone.

Meanwhile,  I wasn't really getting a good mental image of how they were going to accomplish all of this moving of body parts around so I asked her if there were some pictures she could show me of their previous work. She was happy to oblige, I'm not sure if I'm sorry I asked or not. The forearm scar was smaller in diameter than I thought it would be but I didn't realize there would be a 6-7 inch incision running up my arm where they will need to remove blood vessels as well. The neck scar isn't horrible but it isn't pretty. The picture she showed me of the chick who had to get her lip and chin split will be giving me nightmares until I wake up in ICU and am able to feel my face to see if they had to do it or not. Ugh. The tongue graft itself simply looks weird. It stays the color of the arm skin and has a different looking texture.I asked her if I was going to be able to get a suntan on half my tongue once this procedure was complete. She gave me an eyebrow and asked if I was really going to lay on a beach with my mouth open. I guess not but I thought it would be another fun fact to share with friends! ;-P

Then the plastic surgeon came in to see me. The very first words out of his mouth were "You're awfully young.". Huh? I asked "What, for cancer?". He said yes. Then I remembered the surgeon's PA on Monday telling me that I'm weird because I'm not a 65+ year old man with this particular type of cancer. Guess she was right.

So, he had me do a bunch of exercises with my left arm. I guess there are two sets of blood vessels that provide blood flow in your arm. They will be removing one set and installing them in my tongue and neck to supply blood to my "new" tongue. We discussed which leg the skin graft should come from and other sundry stuff. He then asked me if I had any more questions and I told him I was good to go. He then commented "You're taking this surprisingly well". Um, okay. Now I'm interested in how other people respond. I let myself have my 2 day meltdown and then got on with things. I can't change anything so I might as well move forward, have the adventure, and make the most from however things shake out. Right?

Luckily, the hospital pre-op did not bring to light any further surprises. I'm allowed to keep my toenails painted and I can bring my Kindle in with me because it's not considered a "valuable". So, I should be good to go. Surgery commences at 1:00 on Monday afternoon. Phew.

Other stuff:
I handed over a spare set of keys for my blog to JT. He will be posting anything of interest (such as nightmares he has from seeing the trach in my neck!) or other information that has any value while I am unable to link to the outside world.

The only bright spot to this whole thing was the 10 pounds I lost but it seems that bright spot was confiscated as well since I got into trouble for it. I'm not allowed to lose any more weight before the surgery (not sure how to prevent it, I sure as hell didn't lose the 10 pounds on purpose, it just hurts too much to eat!). Supposedly you burn 3,000 calories a day when healing so they want you to have plenty of stuff in your body to burn. That's almost a pound a day! I told them to feel free to keep me in the hospital for 40 days. Then I might finally be able to wear the Victoria Secrets bikini I bought 5 years ago!

I picked up my prescriptions last night for post surgery recuperating. There's an antibiotic mouthwash and a huge ass bottle of liquid Vicodin. I'm a little worried about the Vicodin. It was so very hard for me to say no to the refill of the OxyContin the surgeon offered me after my emergency appendectomy a year and a half ago. Now I have a huge bottle of yet another controlled substance in my hands! All I can think about is House. He popped Vicodin like they were tic-tacs! Luckily, I'm told that the head and neck have the most robust blood flow as compared to the rest of the human body. Supposedly this means that pain is greatly lessened when trauma happens. Maybe I'll only need Vicodin for a few days and then can switch back to Tylenol. If I start babbling weird stuff on here, please come over and host an intervention for me.

A warm and fuzzy about the health care professionals taking care of me: I've had 5-6 people give huge props to the surgeons who will be tag teaming me in the operating room. One person said that their relative went to NYC to get a second opinion on a procedure similar to mine and she was sent right back to Rochester because this particular team is as good as, if not better than anything NYC can offer. Dude taking my blood at the hospital today said that he has been watching these two particular doctors working together for years. He said he's seen people come in desperately ill and once these surgeons get done, he would sincerely declare it a miracle in how drastically better they are afterwards. I am super psyched to be getting so much unsolicited positive feedback about these guys!

Okay, I think that's everything. I'm going nuts over here because I can't wait for Monday to come so that I can get things underway but I'm also dreading Monday because it's going to be the start of a lot of unpleasant stuff. Wish me luck!