HEADS UP

It started a while back but came to head about 4 months ago. I ended up with a golf ball size tumor on the side of my head. We finally got an appointment with a doctor in May and discover it was a type of skin cancer. The treatment was to remove it.

 We then met with a surgeon in Nacogdoches, Dr. Brett Shirley. I liked him very much and he did the first surgery June 5^th at the Nacogdoches Medical Center. 

To remove it, he had to carve a very large and deep hole in my head about the size of a moon pie. I was then outfitted with a wound vac to cover the hole and help it heal.  I had to go three days a week to have the dressing changed.

The downside to the wound vac is that I have a tube running out of the side of my head into a cannister that I have carry with me at all times. I look like I am being assimilated into the Borg. It is electrical so it is plugged into a wall socket. When I need to travel further than the couch in front of the tv, it has a battery that takes over.

Last week I had a P.E.T scan done to see if they had removed all of the cancer and to see if it had spread elsewhere. The results showed that Dr. Brett had got it all and it was nowhere to be found. I AM CANCER FREE.  Yea!

Yesterday I went back for skin graft surgery to cover up the hole in my head. Fortunately, none of my few brain cells that had survived my early rock and roll years had leaked out. The wound vac was put back on for one more week and then this episode is thankfully over.

I want to thank Dr. Brett Shirley and his staff at Piney Woods Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery for doing a great job. They are the best. I want to thank Hannah at Wound Care for doing an excellent job of changing the dressing on my wound vac and all of the nurses at Nacogdoches Medical Center for being very caring and doing a super job.

Most of all I want to thank by best friend, partner-in-crime and beautiful wife Diana for taking such good care of me. I couldn’t have made it without her.

I am also grateful that this whole episode, with two minor exceptions, were almost pain free. This is good because, and I know you people who know me personally probably won’t believe this, but when it comes to pain, I am a REAL WEENIE.

All in all, I think the hardest hits of the whole thing were to my billfold and my hairdo.

Stay tuned for future adventures.