December 19 - Skeletor checking in for the week. Down to 125.2 as of 2 days ago. Been avoiding the scale since then.

Running out of the pain meds has, to put it mildly, SUCKED. I had a 20 minute long gagging episode at my desk on Monday that ended with me puking into my garbage can. I'm back to only sleeping for 2-3 hours at a time with a lot of insomnia in between. I've been dosing up on Nyquil the past 2 nights but boss guy told me to try something called Melatonin. His ADD/Asperger's syndrome kid has a really hard time falling asleep so they feed him this "natural" supplement 1.5 hours before bed. I picked some up at lunch so I will be trying it tonight.

It's been over a week and still no word from Dr. A. It's probably just as well. After my appointment with Dr. C yesterday, I've had it up to my eyeballs with doctors in general (although not you Karen, you don't count because you're my friend, not my doctor, just so we're clear!).

So, my appointment with Dr. C was at 9:00 and I was back at work by 9:35. Kunkel was blown away. She said at least 15 minutes of that had to be driving time! I told her what a wham, bam, thank you ma'am type of dude he was. She now believes me. So, he scoped me, did some prodding around and said that I looked like I was exactly where I should be at this point and there's no cancer to be seen. I was like okay, but I was wondering about this gagging thing and what I can be doing about it? According to him, he has never, ever, ever had a patient complain about gagging after surgery. Are you shitting me?!? First Dr. A tells me that I'm weird because most people get their sugar taste buds back first and mine are still dead. Now Dr. C is telling me that I'm weird because I have this gagging thing going on?? UGH. On top of that, he said the only reason he was seeing me was to verify that the cancer hadn't come back, not to try and solve the gagging thing. Well, great. Dr. A doesn't know what to do about it and Dr. C doesn't want to be bothered.

Long story short; he didn't think it was a good idea for me to be controlling the gagging thing with pain meds, he thinks I just need to get used to the wad of flesh in my mouth. He said 1 out of every 40 patients has to go back under the knife to get de-bulked (excess flesh cut away) but they don't make that call until 1 full year has gone by after the surgery. I told him that Dr. H had mentioned this but that Dr. V had pooh-poohed it. He said that if Dr. V was confident enough to pooh-pooh it this early in the game then it's extremely unlikely that I will need to get it done seeing as how he's done thousands of these.  And that's that. He waved at me and walked out of the room.

And since my week was already going so wonderfully well, I stopped home for lunch yesterday to find that Dr. V had sent me a bill for my portion of his work. $2500! Who the heck sends out whomping big bills like that 6 days before Christmas?!? Luckily, grandma left me some money when she passed away 2 years ago. I socked a wad of it away and will now be using it for this bill as well as any others that come my way. Thank you grandma! XOXOXO I also made sure to check my insurance coverage and it looks like I'm liable for up to $4k which is a good thing to know so I can keep an eye on how much moulah is flying out the door to all the different medical peeps involved in this process. Of course, at the end of the day, $4k is a small price to pay to hopefully be alive for another 5, 10, or however many years. :-)

 In other news, I found a copycat recipe on-line for MickyD's shamrock shake. Made it the other day. Wasn't all that thrilled with the taste. No clue if it's the recipe or my taste buds though. Guess I'll find out when the real thing comes out in March.

Man-servant is spending a lot of time at the house. The fan in the family room looks fantastic! I walked out into that room ~15 times the first day after it was installed simply so that I could admire it over and over again. He now has the laundry area of the basement totally gutted. Still don't know what's actually wrong with the dryer though. Might be giving the economy a boost in January. New mattress, new washer/dryer combo, 50" flatscreen for the living room.......Obama is going to love me!

Lastly, I preached today. I told myself that I wasn't going to be one of those people but then I went ahead and did it. I have mixed feelings about the event. I went to Direct Buy to pick up some wine glasses that I had ordered (in September, mind you!) and the incredibly hot, young kid at the loading dock was outside on a smoke break. I followed him in, we checked out my goods, I signed off on them, and he carted them up to take them out to my car. As we were walking out of the building, I casually mentioned to him that I had been diagnosed with tongue cancer back in June. He said "oh, I'm sorry to hear that" and you could tell by the look on his face that he was wondering why I was sharing with him. So, I told him about them hacking out part of my tongue and putting a part of my arm in its place. I showed him the scar on my arm. Told him about the 60 pounds that I've lost and what a living hell the whole thing has been. I then told him the reason that I was mentioning it was that I saw him over near the dumpster when I pulled in, smoking. And that if he had even the slightest interest in quitting, that I would highly recommend it. I told him that even though I had seen all the commercials, and read all the warnings, I had never actually known anyone personally who had gotten cancer from smoking so I had the attitude of "can't happen to me". So, just in case he also had yet to meet someone personally who had cancer from smoking, let me introduce myself, my name is Cathy Quinn. He was very good natured about it. We talked about how hard it is to quit. I told him that it's been over 6 months since my last cigarette and I STILL dream about smoking sometimes. The whole convo ended on a laugh so I'm hoping I didn't sound like too big of a jerk. In the end, he's free to take it or leave it, in regards to my (hopefully not too preachy) warning. I just felt like getting it out there, even if I only have the nerve to do it this one time.