Happy Anniversary!

No... its not my wedding anniversary, that was a few days ago. It's the anniversary of the start of my treatments to eradicate cancer. It was a year ago today that I started chemo and radiation treatments. I always felt it was appropriate to start radiation treatment on Halloween. If it was a grade B horror film there would have been lightning in the background and some sort of mutation would have occurred. Just think about what cool super powers I could have gotten.

Fortunately it was just another day, one of many during the treatment phase. The net result is that 6 months after treatment ended there is no detectable sign of cancer. A big time yippee! for that. While I will be tested every few months the next major milestone is at 2 years. recurrence for this type of cancer is fairly low though they can't give me specific numbers. The population pool especially in my demographic is just too small. However I have been told it is less than 10%. Good news!

Now all that is left is the recovery phase a.k.a. Operation Garbage Plate. Things are proceeding according to plan and next week I will update where I am at and what the current state of swallowing is. My approach to recovery was mentioned in an column about cancer in the local paper. Here is a link to the article.

Dilation Procedure Number VI

Today was dilation procedure number VI. The results were once again a success. This time we moved from 13.5 MM to 15 MM, a 23% increase in volume. This should start to open up some solid food opportunities. It takes a few days for the soreness to go down so I may wait until then to really try to push it. I was able to eat a can of clam chowder soup once I got home without a problem.

On other news I can just about eat macaroni salad without too much of a problem. That means one component of the garbage plate is almost in reach. Yippee!