Month: June 2010

Visited the tongue doctor last week and the tongue is OK, no cancer. There is a small chance it can turn into cancer but if I keep an eye on the area where the thing was removed it can be removed before anything bad happens.

Here is a photo of me from April.  Chemotherapy, radiotherapy, a stem cell transplant, and steroids are really good at wearing you down.  I also lost a lot of muscle tone after 6 weeks in bed last year plus the 4 weeks a few months before that and so on and so on.  Now that I am finally feeling a bit more energetic after the last few drug changes I can finally start doing some exercise.  I lost a bit of the puffy look as the steroid level has dropped and my diabetes has been easier to control.  Previously any sugary/carbo foods really made by Blood Sugar Level (BSL) to shoot up.   Now I can have a bit of choccy and not have to worry too much about the BSL. Also, I have been losing some of the redness in my face (it was very red after hospital).

My Puffy

I visited the doctor again on wednesday.  The kidneys are OK, slightly off but no real problems.  The liver is improving but there is still some way to go.  The steroid dose was lowered to 10mg with the aim to get me off the steroid.

I had my tongue surgery on Friday.  I was given some sedation but remained conscious throughout the procedure, at least I think I was although some details are a bit hazy.  They put a surgical cloth over my face with a hole for my mouth.  I presume it had a dual purpose, to protect me from the sight of the surgeons tools and to keep any splatter etc off my face.  I then had to hold my tongue out while they put some local anaesthetic into it.  The surgeon then cut out the thing.  It all took about ten minutes.  I did not feel a thing, not even the local anaesthetic going in, which was a relief.  So now I am waiting for the biopsy results in a week or two.  The tongue was a bit sore on the first day.  It is now Sunday and it feels fine with only a small amount of pain.  I think there are four stitches in my tongue.  Click on the photos below for a super-sized view of the organ.

Before surgery - fancy a snog?

After surgery - tasty!

Another doctor visit today.  The liver is getting better…slowly.  The liver ‘number’ was 1000, it is now 600 with normal being about 130 or something so some way to go to get back to normal.  The kidneys are OK, a little bit off but the levels have been constant, i.e., it is not getting worse and in fact it is not too bad really,  It is all getting a bit monotonous which is not a bad thing considering the alternative.  I also had two litres of IV fluid today to give the kidneys a bit of a flush, it was given to me over 2 hours.