Living in Hope

It's now been four months since my surgery, and I am finally feeling energized enough for continued reflection on my situation. Since the focus on my experiences in the hyperbaric oxygen chamber is no longer relevant, I toyed with the idea of changing the title of this blog, but decided that the concept of day to day breathing in hope was still a powerful symbolic motif for me.

My surgery outcome was mixed; the surgeon excised "all visible tumor," but could not get clean margins. He stopped trying when it became clear that the cancer was microscopically present around my jawbone, facial nerve and neck muscle, and so to go further would dramatically alter my quality of life. He also knew that there was no guarantee the cancer hadn't already jumped ahead along nerves beyond any apparent clean margin he might find, and so, as we'd agreed ahead of time, he took what he could without causing major damage, covered it with a skin graft from my right thigh, and sewed me up.

While I was under, also as agreed to, the oral surgeon I'd been working with extracted my right rear molar, dug out some necrotic bone around the area that had been exposed, and pulled together the gum tissue as closely as he could, in the hopes that it would knit completely.

In the short term post-surgery I tried to focus on the need for healing at hand, in my mouth, at the graft site, and at the excision area. I was grateful for a cosmetic result that at least for the immediate future left me looking relatively "normal," but I was also intimidated by the potential, seemingly inevitable, challenges ahead.

To jump start healing, the doctors sent me back into the hyperbaric oxygen chamber the morning after my surgery, straight from my hospital room. I remember feeling incredibly vulnerable, not 24 hours out of surgery, on pain medication, and not able to trust my emotions. I knew the chamber staff would be protective of me, but what I did not expect was the gesture of one of the other "dive" patients, who, upon being told the outcome of my surgery, took my hand and kissed it with a sincerity of compassion that brought tears to my eyes. That was his last day of treatment, and I will probably never see him again, but his simple action simultaneously gave me permission to cry and encouraged me not to give up. It was a gift I've been carrying with me ever since.