It was a good week, it was a bad week.

Not much to say this week, very little progress. While I don’t seem to have a sore throat, it seems to dry out very quickly and I have to drink a lot to keep it lubed. The two spots on my tongue that made it hard to eat seem to have improved this week, I hope that continues. I ate almost anything I wanted this week and some things I shouldn’t have (dough nuts). I can still only eat so much before my throat gets sore, thus limiting how much I eat. That’s probably a good thing. I do have some issues at night. The lack of working salivary glands makes my mouth and throat dry out quickly and I wake up with my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth and my lips to my teeth. In the lower part of my throat it seems like it’s coated with thick saliva, so when I wake up and take a drink to lubricate everything it still seems like there is stuff still stuck in my lower throat. So, I swallow a lot for 10-15 minutes trying to clear the crap out of my throat. It makes getting back to sleep a bit of a chore. It’s the same when I wake up in the morning, that feeling of gunk in my throat until after I eat something. I guess that clears all the gunk out.

It was a good week for renewing old friendships. I hosted a meeting on Monday and Tuesday through Friday another organization hosted a meeting I attended here in San Antonio. It was an international meeting so I met up with a few folks that I haven’t seem since last year prior to my diagnosis and a few folks here in town that hadn’t gotten the word of my illness. It was encouraging to meet up with them. They got to see how well I’m improving and wished me well. It gave me a lift.

I was brought back to reality when I inquired about another colleague that had been diagnosed with throat cancer about a year prior to me; he unfortunately is doing very poorly and isn’t expected to last much longer. His cancer, a much different cancer than mine, has spread and there isn’t much more the doctors can do for him. I understand he put up a valiant fight and was positive all the way through all of his treatments and surgeries. He was obviously a very strong willed person. It’s amazing what strength people have inside them. I know there were days when I was really beaten down, but I knew in a short time things would get better, so I made it through that day and on to the next. Sam kept finding out things weren’t going well, his cancer had spread and he was going to have to have another treatment, he’d been radiated to the max, so they would have to use more chemo. Everyone knows cancer treatments are hard on a body and when you have to endure more and more different treatments it will just beat you down so the only thing keeping you going is your will. That’s when your metal will show through. I never came anywhere close to that, Sam’s my hero.

But, like Frank Sinatra sang, “that’s life . . . flying high in April, shot down in May.” My week started out great, and then I heard about Sam. Life has a way of slapping you up side the head and injecting reality at the least expected moments. Again I look at the calendar to see what has transpired since January and there are still 6 months left in this year . . . it has got to get better! Don’t read anything into that. I am convinced things will return to normal, and things will get better. A number a years from now 2010 will be a distant memory.

So, here’s to next week. I sense improvement is at hand.

Cheers,
Miller, out