No, not the extremely offensive "c" word. I'm talking about cancer. Yeah, that one. You hear about someone who is diagnosed with cancer, you may or may not know them, and your heart does go out to them. But unless you've dealt with it personally, it doesn't really hold the same meaning. I've been touched by it twice: once with my grandmother and once with myself.

Let's jump back a few years to November 2001. I was going to college in Las Vegas at the time and had made the trek back to Colorado for Thanksgiving. Sometime during the holiday break, the fam managed to catch and trade a cold. Nothing too serious; just overall feeling of poo and sore throats. My glands were all swollen as they usually did when I got sick; no biggie I thought. My break ended and back I went to school. But something wasn't right. I didn't bounce back to feeling good and I noticed that one of the swollen glands was pretty freaking big and not tender to the touch. That's a bad sign right there: you want lumps to be tender to the touch. But to be honest, I wasn't too concerned about the gland because ever since entering college, I'd been getting strep throat like there was no tomorrow and I chalked it up to this lymph node not being able to fully recover since I was constantly getting strep. I continued on with school and work until it was getting to the point where I would be exhausted with the simplest task. Going to the bathroom was sometimes prolonged for hours because I just couldn't muster the energy to get off the couch to go. A particularly alarming moment was the night my good friend, Steve, dragged me to the mall to get out. He had to help me put my coat on because it actually hurt to have clothes on. My body was just throbbing from the inside out. You'd think I would've been concerned enough to, I don't know, go to the hospital?!? But now, I soldiered on with life. Although after this episode, I mentioned it all to my mom. She was of course concerned but I told her I wanted to wait until Christmas break to come home and see our family doctor whom I trusted. I knew he would be able to figure things out and he had such a wonderful bedside manner that he could seriously tell you that you had 1 day left and you'd leave smiling. He was wonderful.

Finally Christmas break rolled around and I packed up the car and drove back to Colorado. It's about a 12 hour drive from Las Vegas to my parents house in the mountains and it just about did me in. The next day, I was in the doctor's office with my sleeves rolled up and giving blood for a variety of tests: iron count, thryoid levels, mono, and a slew of others I can't remember now. During the days of waiting for the results to come back, I was still struggling to find any energy to function. I hate being sick and am so used to being active that I just kept moving; couldn't stop, couldn't let myself think about how seriously sick I was. The test results came back and everything was negative. While some people may take this as good news, I started crying. Something was wrong they hadn't tested for. I mean, why else would I feel so awful? My doctor was concerned enough by my symptoms, and especially the lump in my neck, that he referred me to another doctor.

This next doctor was the antithesis of my family doctor: a moron and zero bedside manner. My mom came with me to the appointment and I had picked up yet another weird symptom: my tongue was now swelling. I have no idea if it was just a coincidence or linked to everything else but this doctor took it upon himself to start throwing out diagnosis after diagnosis without doing what any decent doctor should do first: run tests. I told him everything about the past few weeks: the symptoms, how I'd been feeling, the recent tests that had been run, everything. We weren't even there 5 minutes and he delivered this blow: "well it sounds like you've got Hodgkins Lymphoma." Oh. My. God. I can't even remember what I was thinking when he said that but thinking back now, this moron should've kept his mouth shut. He hadn't done any tests on me and he's telling me this?!? The rest of the appointment was a blur and the only thing I remember was walking out with my mom and completely losing it. I was sobbing. No matter how out of line this quack was, I knew I was sick and hearing that I "had" Hodgkins just brought me to my knees.

Once again I'd been referred to yet another doctor. This time it was an ear, nose and throat doctor. Ironically the same doctor who'd taken my tonsils out 2 years prior. (FYI, having tonsils out as an adult is not an enjoyable experience.) By this point, I was sort of on auto pilot. Dr. Sensitivity had already told me I was basically going to die so I'd lost any sort of personality myself. This new doctor (whom I will not mention by name due to legal reasons but if you ask nicely, I'll tell you his name) immediately wanted to run a needle biopsy on this lump in my neck. To give you an idea of its size, imagine a walnut along the side of your windpipe with just a little bit missing. Yeah, kinda big. I kept my eyes closed for this dandy little procedure. While I don't mind getting shots and such, I don't like watching it done. From what my mom tells me, the needle was quite, um, large. It was so large because it was going to be pushed into this lump and cells would be taken out for testing. I felt the prick of the needle going in but after that, only felt the sensation of it moving in and out. Yet another not-so-awesome sign. The doc seemed concerned by the lump and decided that surgery needed to be scheduled for 5 days out. Whatever this lump was, we needed to go in and see what was going on. In the meantime, he scheduled me for a CT scan. Auto pilot continued.

The CT scan was a couple days later and this was yet another appointment I won't ever forget. My mom stayed out in the waiting room of the hospital while they took me back to run the CT. It's noteworthy that a lab TECH was doing the procedures. TECHS, legally, are not supposed to say anything about what they see/find. That is the radiologists or doctors job. Just keep that little tidbit in mind. So I hop up on the table, IV full of dye in hand (literally) and wait as the lovely little machine comes back with an image of what is going on in my neck. Just a few minutes later, the tech calls me off the table and brings me back behind the wall to where she, and the computer screens, is waiting. She points out what she just scanned and while I wasn't sure what I was looking at at first, she soon made it quite clear. She pointed out the major arteries in my neck. And the large grey mass between them. And dropped this little comment: "Because of where that mass is (between the arteries), they're gonna have to be really careful taking that out or you're gonna have brain damage!" I kid you not, she said it like it was supposed to be funny. I just turned around and walked back out to where my mom was. I'm guessing the look on my face was a dead giveaway that things had not gone well in there. I don't even remember if I cried this time but I will tell you that the prospect of walking out into oncoming traffic seemed kinda good at the moment. I mean, come on! Hodgkins and brain dead?!? The odds were not stacked in my favor.

I can't say I remember much of what happened between then and heading to the hospital in Denver for the surgery. We'd been told that it would be a 45-minute, out-patient procedure. They were going to go in and remove, what I'd been told was, a necrotic lymph node. Seemed simple enough. 45 minutes is less than an episode of Grey's! While I was getting ready for the surgery: having my IV line put in, changing into a hospital gown, and signing those papers, I got this feeling. The feeling that something was not going to go well. Of course I didn't tell my mom this until long after the surgery because she was already worried enough about me and who wants to hear that right before surgery?!? I told her I loved her as they wheeled me off to the operating room. I remember a lot about it, unfortunately. It was insanely bright and white and the nurses were all talking and chipper, gearing up to hack me open. And apparently the good doctor liked to listen to music while operating. Really? Shouldn't you be paying attention to what you're doing? And the last thing I hear before I went under was a song that was topping the charts that I hated: Toby Keith's I wanna talk about me. Just my luck.

I will preface this by saying, my body doesn't do too well with anesthesia. I'm fine (as far as I know) while I'm under but once they bring me out, my body revolts. Cue violent vomiting. That was my first memory of coming out of the anesthesia after the surgery. Not the best way to wake up. I heard people telling me I needed to stop throwing up. Oh okay, you got it! I wasn't doing it because I wanted to people. Finally the retching stopped and I heard someone in the recovery bay ask what time it was. It was 4:45pm. Even though I was totally groggy and out of it, I knew something wasn't right. The surgery was supposed to have been 45 minutes and it was now 4 and a half hours later. And my mom was supposed to have been there with me while I recovered enough to be discharged. She wasn't there. Then I heard the doctor say, "we got all of the tumor out." Whoa. My brain was hearing this but my body was certainly not ready to have a real discussion. I was too busy trying to get the puke out of my ear. As I became more aware, I realized that the nurses were prepping all the tubes and cords in me like they were moving me somewhere. Again, I wasn't really able to ask what the heck what was going on. They start wheeling my bed toward the elevator and all of a sudden, I couldn't breathe. My throat decided it was a fine time to not allow any air in. Sweet! I panicked, of course. I noticed the nurses were talking to me calmly, telling me I was okay but were sprinting my bed back into the recovery bay to check my oxygen. Definitely didn't help to keep me calm. I just wanted to know what the &*$% was going on and no one had done so yet. After I was able to breathe again, back to the elevator I went and up to a room. This was not part of the plan. They wheeled me into a private room where my mom was waiting. I was terrified to say the least. I didn't say anything because I was on the verge of puking and didn't want to go through the not breathing thing again. They moved me from the tiny operating bed to the "roomier" bed...ha! The nurses went to work hooking all my tubes and wires back up to whatever they were hooked up to. I then realized I had a massive tube coming out of my neck. Lovely! After they left, it was then that my mom told me what had happened.

She'd been in the waiting room, watching the clock until my supposed 45-minute procedure was up. Somewhere between an hour and two had gone by when a doctor/nurse/not sure who came out and told her that they had found something they weren't expecting. They'd found a tumor the size of a lemon in my neck. It was attached to a nerve but was wrapped up in other nerves and my vocal chords. They were trying to minimize any nerve damage but weren't sure if I'd be able to talk afterward. He told her I was doing good during the surgery and then he left. All I know is that long after the surgery my mom told her she'd totally lost it in the waiting room. No one was there to help her through this. My dad was working in California at the time and was waiting to hear how I was doing but there was basically zero cell phone reception where he was. Needless to say, it was not a good time for her.

So now I was on an in-patient status for who knew how long, had a tube coming out of my neck that was attached to a drain machine and I was not allowed to get out of bed to use the bathroom. That meant I had to use the dreaded bed pan. For anyone that has never had to use one, try and keep it that way. For all the years that you've been using a toilet and resisting the urge to pull a Dumb & Dumber and just go in your pants, using a bed pan was seriously hard. First off, I was flat on my back and I just couldn't get rid of the urge NOT to pee in bed! That and the bed pan handler was a male nurse. Not hot or anything but young and while I'm sure he dealt with it all the time, I did not. It took me an hour to finally "relax" enough to go. I was not happy. The tube in my neck was to drain out the area from which they removed the tumor. It had left a pretty big space behind and bodily fluids were collecting there so the vaccuous tube was necessary to keep it from building up.

I ended up staying in the hospital for 4 days. During this time, we realized that I didn't have any damage to my vocal cords but it was clear that some nerve damage had been done to the left side of my face: my jaw was numb to the touch and my left eyebrow was drooping quite a bit. The doctor said that some nerves had probably been damaged in surgery but it was looking like I would have a pretty good recovery. Or so we thought. Come the time for me to be discharged, it also meant the time for the gargantuan tube to be taken out of my neck. I kid you not, it was about a 1/2 inch in diameter with what looked like a flattened rectangular Leggo on the end to you know, soak up stuff. I was already freaked out from this whole experience and the thought of having a Leggo pulled through a pinhole in my neck didn't help. I ended up having a panic attack and subsequently, couldn't breathe for a bit. Didn't help with the fear. And of course I got myself all worked up for nothing; it was more uncomfortable than painful when they took it out.

Of course I was drained, physically and emotionally, but was starting to feel better and it wasn't until after I'd been at home for a couple days that I discovered the big problem. I'd just sat down to have some breakfast and when I took the first bite, I was met with the most searing, excruciating pain in the left side of my jaw. I can't truly describe it but it honestly felt like someone was stabbing me repeatedly in the jaw. My mom called the doctor right away to explain what was happening and this was the beginning of things getting weird with this guy. Thinking back on the whole thing, he never asked me to come in for a follow up. Now come one, I'd just had major surgery and most decent doctors would have you come back to see how you're healing and such. Not this guy. My mom spoke with his nurse that first day, telling her exactly what was happening and was told the doctor would call back. From that point on, every time I ate something, I got the same searing pain again. It not only brought tears to my eyes, but full on tears streaming down my cheeks. It was bad. A couple days had gone by and we had not heard from the doctor. My mom called and spoke with the nurse yet again. This time her tone was a little...weird. Almost like she didn't want to pass the message along. And if she did, the doctor never returned our calls. All 7 of them. I find it extremely weird that when after a major surgery, the doctor doesn't schedule a follow-up or return calls when the patient has some troubling after-effects.

And so, the time had come to return back to school. I was already going back 2 weeks late because of the surgery and the issues with my jaw were getting worse. Any food I ate produced massive pain and lots of tears. I then began the process of going to doctor after doctor in the Las Vegas metro area, trying to figure out what was causing the pain. I had 1 doctor tell me the nerves were "coming back to life" and the pain was to be expected. Another one said that I had a blocked salivary gland and to suck on hard candy to unblock it; Jolly Rancher stock had to have shot up that month. When it was clear that none of these wacky suggestions was doing anything, I finally got hooked up with an orthodontist. He was truly a blessing as he was the only doctor in a long line to figure out the problem. He figured that when the breathing tube was put down my throat, my jaw was dislocated and instead of trying to fix it properly, the doctor continued on his way and my jaw didn't heal properly. This orthodontist gave me a couple of options: one being a sort of mouth guard to wear at night to try and alleviate the pain I was having while eating or have surgery to go in, break my jaw, remove the scar tissue, reset it and have my jaw wired shut for 8 weeks. And there was no guarantee that would work. No thanks. I would learn to deal with the pain. And I have.

Over the years since the surgery, other problems have come to light. I also have Horner's Syndrome as a result of the surgery. It is a clinical syndrome caused by damage to the sympathetic nervous system and it's symptoms include: ptosis (drooping upper eyelid), myosis (constricted pupil...seriously, my left pupil does not dilate anymore and I get wicked infections in that eye) and anhidrosis (lack of sweating). Unfortunately, I got the reverse of anhydrosis: hyperhidrosis (excessive sweating). Lucky me, I have a spot on my forehead (we nicknamed it Fred) that is a little overactive in the sweating department. The mornings are worse, as are when I get nervous and upset, and it seemed to be getting worse as time went on. I couldn't really wear foundation makeup anymore as it would be gone in a matter of minutes from the sweating and after relocating to humid as all get out Indiana for work, I was really tired of dealing with it. I started doing my research on cures for hyperhidrosis and there were a few; some of which included putting deodorant on the area (no way am I putting Secret on my forehead) and Endoscopic Thoracic Sympathectomy (ETS) surgery. In ETS surgery, they go in through your chest, sometimes deflating a lung (um, no thank you) and clamp specific nerves. I'm just about done with the elective surgeries, especially ones that include deflating my lungs. I was desperate to fix this issue but I wasn't that desperate. It was then that I remembered something I'd seen on tv; on an episode of Dr. 90210 to be exact. A guy had excessively sweaty palms and underarms and went to a dermatologist friend who remedied these problems with something we all have heard of: Botox. Yes, Botox is used for hyperhidrosis! I called a well-known doctor in Denver to discuss this with him and it seemed that I could take great benefit from this.

Many people scoff at those that use Botox, that they're trying to stop the aging clock and end up looking frozen. But for those that do make fun, please don't. You don't always know why someone is getting it and I get tired of having to explain why I do get it. The doctor uses a much smaller, more diluted amount than used to correct wrinkles and it has been an absolute Godsend to help with the problem I have because of the surgery. And even if I was getting it for cosmetic reasons, who cares! There's nothing wrong with trying to make yourself feel good.

I have accepted the problems I have due to the surgery. And while filing a malpractice lawsuit was seriously considered and even started, I realized that I wouldn't have more surgeries to correct the problems. I'm done with the elective surgeries. Yes, it really sucks that it still hurts like mad whenever I eat, that I get really painful infections in my left eye, that I have to shell out money to have a cosmetic procedure done to alleviate the sweating in my forehead; but I certainly appreciate the little things in life more. Sometime I tended to forget before I went through all of this.

The best part was that about a month after surgery, I got the opportunity to watch my mom carry the torch for the 2002 Winter Olympics. Something I wasn't sure I'd be around to witness when I started feeling sick.