Or a corndog.
Everyone should be this happy at least once in their lives.
Or a corndog.
Everyone should be this happy at least once in their lives.
Sorry for the lack of updates, my handful of dear but loyal readers. Recovery from this has been…..weird.
But! On with some good news before I get my shit together an do some posts about the recovery. I had a swallow test on Tuesday (yesterday, as I write this). I was quite nervous about it, worried that going on three years of non-use was going to be problematic.
As it turns out, the largest obstacle – or, rather, the biggest missing piece of the entire process – is not having a full tongue (and not being able to move what I have, thanks to the muscle removal that was necessary during the original cancer surgery).
However, by tilting my head back a little and doing a swallow, I can get thin liquids down. Hooray!
It takes 3-4 tries to actually clear my mouth, because of the tongue, but it goes down eventually. Now I can use my Yeti cup again and also just have a regular drink after working outside (or just walking outside, it’s 100F here and will be for the next ten days, according to the forecast).
I did try a slightly thicker swallow during the test, but could not swallow that well at all until a little thin was introduced into it. My esophagus has thinned a little at spots, but that, like the swallowing function itself, should get a bit better with practice. And this practice will be a lot more fun than most of the other things I’ve had to do over these past 14 years.
Until next time, peeps: be well. I’ll try to make the next time a bit of a shorter interval.