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Went to the bar last night.  All the bartenders know us pretty well. Couple of them are in school for nursing/medicine.  We were shooting the shit with one of them and the topic of dissection comes up.  So I say, check out these surgery pics from my buddy last December and whip out the iPhone.  Dude’s face lights up like Christmas morning and he grabs my phone and proceeds to show all the other bartenders your pics.  Another girl bartender we are friends with then takes it over to a table to show a bunch of her nurse friends.  I grabbed my wife’s phone and documented the nurses huddled around for campfire stories.  They all dug your well documented pics.

Brian

Brian made a post on our cancer support forum that he intends to post to his blog on his condition having oral surgery this past week.  I’m going to re-post the story here since I believe it has some good information related to how similar our cancers are.  I’m sure he will get this info up on his blog soon but due to network issues in the hospital it will have to wait I’m guessing until he is released.

Here is his post:

I had intended to post this to my blog so everyone could get an update but the mad hotspot here won’t let me log in so hope you don’t mind if I have you a quick update here..I’m still around…battered and sore but felling better by the hour.

here’s my blog post, I’ll put it in when I have proper email and internet acces.

Day 1

Well actually its day 5, the 1st time I’ve felt well enough and mobile enough to haul out the laptop..sadly no wifi connection in the room, but there is a pay network hotspot way down in the hospital reception… I left my wallet at home with my cards, so will have to get Bina to bring it in I’ll try to make a posting today..Mum’s here though so I dunno why the rest of you will be reading this

Seems wrong to start off with today, and not give you a timetable of events but tbh the last few days are a bit of a jumble so best I just explain the best I can remember. I do really feel a lot better today, over the last few days 1 by 1, I’ve had drips drains and catheters removed and as I type this I just have one drain left which will be removed soon.

So…what was it like? Painful of course, incredibly sore, despite the numbing of half my face due to the nerves being tickled and prodded, I still have all my facial nerves intact and they are starting to reconnect at different rates usually preceded with pain. My tongue is half numb still so speaking is a bit slurred but have been told that will resolve itself soon
I have no idea what’s going on in my mouth because the numb side is of course the side where the work was done, but it feels a bit like a big swollen mass at the moment, we’ll have to wait a few more days till the swelling does down to get a better idea.
The surgeon is a bit confused by the pain tbh. Everything above the wound is fairly numb and not too bad, but a few inches below is very raw and swollen.(well everything is but swollen and painful below the wound)

The actual surgery took 5 hours I’m told, and it was quite a surreal experience. Unlike in the UK where you go in, settle down for a few hours, get a pre med, have a quick visit with a surgeon, then get taken down to the anaesthetist. Here we booked in…were shown the room where I would be spending the next 6 or 7 days and basically left to it. About an hour before hand they dropped off some very fetching paper pants and a poppit fastening gown, and gave me a file to take down to the surgeon to discuss what he was going to do.

That was fine, he re-stated pretty much everything he mentioned before and we asked a few more questions about healing rates and so on.

Back to the room…and then told it was set for 12-45 and to get into my paper pants 15 mins before…oh and go to the toilet 1st.
Gulp

Bina stayed with me till they wheeled me out of the room..still no pre-med, and I was wheeled straight down to the actual theatre where of course in typical Dutch fashion everyone introduced themselves…..odd..
I then shuffled onto the op table, fitting my head into a head rest, this was hard and uncomfortable but kept my head nice and still….still no pre-med.
Then they started fitting me with IV’s and strapping me in while still awake….finally the white stuff was pumped in and I was out cold….

5 hours later…

Recovery was awful….since I had swallowed a couple of bucket loads of blood I was very nauseous and they could not give me enough morphine to do the job because that increases the nausea…of course the numb face at least meant I was not screaming the house down.

I’ve never been happier to see Bina and Jodie at that point, unable to say much, in incredible pain and trying hard to breath as my mouth was full of bloody and sticky choking mucus. I grabbed their hands as they stood either side of me and felt immediately better. Both of them wearing sterile hat and gown, which really made Jodies bum look huge???

Things get a bit vague at that point, thoughts are very muddled and I was in distress a few times as I struggled to breath/avoid throwing up,
But eventually things must have stabilised, the surgeon came to see me and wanted to see me doing kiss and smile moves…not too successfully; then they wheeled me back up to the room, where in a few moments of lucidity I worked out that I had all my tubes and drains in place. 2 in the neck, an IV in my wrist and foot , a couple of nasal tubes, which I didn’t understand at 1st, 1 was Oxygen, the other was feeding.

I wasn’t able to wash out my mouth so the thick congealed blood coating my mouth and tongue was stopping any fresh saliva from being produced. The gave me a damp cloth though which I put in my mouth and rubbed my tongue as hard as possible to get it clean…it came out black with congealed blood and took several goes to get something close to clear.

That was the 1st couple of days basically, swallowing was agony, and breathing occasionally become difficult as the thick goo in my mouth would choke me with no easy way to cough and swallow the accumulated and very very sticky gunk

Sleep didn’t come easily and the next 48 hours or so were spent watching the worlds slowest clock on the wall tick seconds away as I tried in vein to find some way to be comfortable on what is supposed to be a state of the art hospital bed (bed goes up bed goes down). I simply couldn’t get cosy. Desperate for sleep and on only mild painkillers there was just no way to drop off and I existed on snatched 5 min naps before waking with a start trying to clear my throat and breath.

Anyway…A nice opiate based injection in the leg one morning gave me 2 hours of blissful painfree sleep (and some very vivid coloured dreams) and I started to feel better.

I got a 1st look at my face which is not a pretty sight at the best of times, and wow….massive angry looking scar with around 30 staples and a huge amount of swelling in the jaw area. At one point the cling film substance they put over the wound to keep everything in place was starting to choke me as my face swelled and swelled pulling it tight across my throat.

All this is normal of course, 4-5 days of swelling are expected and it should start to die down after the weekend.

Mum turned up on Thursday night, she had this trip planned long before the cancer diagnosis so we all agreed she should still come over and we’ll see how things go, but it was clear when she saw me she was a bit shocked at the state of my swollen face. But after a few mins of chatting she was ok.

I’m talking, albeit with some difficulty as my tongue is still numb on one side and I don’t have full lip control but I am at least understandable, so when mum whipped out a video camera to take in the scene I couldn’t resist spouting as many filthy expletives as I was able….something for her to remember ?
I can’t really listen to my ipod either as my right ear is totally numb and it feels too freekingly odd to put an ear piece in. So mostly I am watching TV in the room…one of the benefits of being a solo occupant.

1 by 1 my various tubes have come out…I asked them keep the catheter in for a few days longer than they planned, part from honest fear but also because for the 1st few days I was weak as a kitten and tired in seconds..I mean that, even a few seconds worth of lucid movement resulted in a need for a 2 hour lie down (no sleep though due to the discomfort), so best to let the bag take the effort and avoid pissing the bed.
The feeding tube somehow got pulled out of position while I was asleep and ended up pumping complan type stuff into my chest. The nurse removed it , revealing the bottom 2 inches or so had been sitting in blood, with the intention of putting a new one in, but I just couldn’t cope with the re-insert so I was allowed to leave it off. So I might lose a few pounds in weight….big deal.

Oh they said the catheter does not hurt when they remove it…that’s a lie….well kinda its not so much pain as…..as……deeply unpleasant. I was peeing again normally a few hours later. Never been so happy to have a stand up pee before.

Eating was possible yesterday but frankly just too painful, so I only managed a couple of small spoonfuls of yogurt. Today is much better, swallowing still hurts but not as much and I managed a full yogurt breakfast and a soup and yogurt lunch. The inside of my mouth is swelling up quite a bit today though and I can’t quite close my mouth without effort, so I don’t expect to be chewing for a few more days

So everyday, I’m getting a bit better, I can get up and move about now for longer than a few seconds before needing a lie down. So far about 20 mins…setting up this laptop and typing a page wiped me out for a couple of hours though.

My right arm is starting to get a bit weak, as I was warned, due to the shoulder nerves in my neck, being moved around. No pain (yet) just a feeling of weakness that will get worse then get better.

Bina has taken pics of me in various states, pretty much every day, with a fuck you cancer theme to them, which should become apparent when I post them.

I am able to pull my emails on my phone, though annoyingly I’ve never worked out how to send messages, and the emails of support are really inspiring. Thank you all for the kind wishes and words of support.

So that’s round 2 over…I seem to have won that, the section of jaw removed, along with 3 teeth had the cancer contained, I keep my facial nerves intact and the lymph glands all “appeared” to be clear and healthy. The pathology takes 2 weeks so we’ll know then if we’ve dealt it a knock out blow!

That’s it….never realised typing could be so tiring…am going to go have a 2 hour lie down then watch Dr Who (I at least get BBC tv here).. I’ll post this as soon as I am able but it might not be till I get out and am back home.

Just a quick update on my leg as it seems the cells are slowly bubbling to the surface filling in the so called hole.  Yet the hair growing in my mouth is out of control.  Ill get pics of that later.

Leg Pizza

This is the leg roughly a month and a half before the one above.

The hole

The Cancer site.

Near the end of October I found out from a biopsy that I had Squamous Cell Carcinoma in the back pocket of my mouth.  Before this biopsy information was given to me I thought at the time it was because I was brushing to hard. I also had a impacted tooth back there thus making me think that something was of issue with the impaction  not cancer.

Here are some basic stats on me:

Eric Warman

Haven’t been to the dentist in many years but do keep good oral care.

Don’t smoke, Don’t drink except socially ( maybe 4 times a year ) and don’t chew tobacco.

Don’t do any drugs of any kind other than what might be prescribed on rare occasions.

Never had any known health issues leading up to this point.

After a couple of weeks of hearing this news from the oral surgeon who took the biopsy I went to see Dr. Bailey to get a consultation of what this really meant.  Leading up to this first meeting I was thinking oh they will just cut a piece out or even had suggestions as to maybe burn it off  or something to that effect.  I didn’t understand how serious and evasive the surgical procedure to remove it would be.  Dr.Bailey was to the point of the issue and the varying degree’s to which it could effect me.  The shocker was the fact that a section of my jaw was possibly to be removed.  Hell even the suggestion of shaving some bone off ( depending on the cancer size and location ) for removal was enough to make me sick.  Needless to say my stomach somewhat dropped at the reality of the circumstances.   That day they set up a CT scan of my head and chest using the awesome tastes like metal dye/peeing your pants feeling.

The Long Walk to CT

The good thing from those scans was it seemed there was no cancer anywhere else in my body and so we could now focus on the task at hand in my mouth.  Although there was another biopsy I had done on the back part of my tongue as a precaution because of a small nodule.  Dr. Lansford preformed this and the results came back negative for cancer.

I know everyone responds diffrent to such news but I was pretty calm about it until I saw this guys site who had roughly the same cancer in the same spot that I had.  He also showed some photo’s of the surgery which really brought home the real reality of this.

Here is his site:   Smokeless Tobacco and My Cancer

I had many a down moments after reading about this guys story and seeing the images, especially the images.  Not only was it about taking some jaw but the reconstruction from you leg and for having a PEG Tube as well just led to the strange surreal feeling of becoming a Frankenstein.  Thing about Curtis ( the guy in the link above ) is that he dipped for some 30 or so years before getting caner.  Where as I didn’t and sometimes that would piss me off  thinking on that fact.  I’m really grateful though to finding Curtis and  that he was really willing to talk about his experience in detail.  In some ways it helped me mentally prepare for what was about to happen.

The Open Mouth Contraption - pre op and refrence for the movie Predator vs Alien .

The other compounding issue was with each Dr. visit in preparation to the surgery.  I found out I had cancer at the end of October and the surgery wasn’t scheduled until Dec 17th.  Dr.Bailey on each visit, in response to my questions, had more and more possible negative outcomes of this procedure, or reality’s.  One day it was my shoulder could droop and it would take some therapy to regain some kind of function pre surgery.  Next time it was a certain degree of numbness would be around my lip and it possibly having a slight droop as if I had a stroke.  Each visit had a small degree of extra possible outcomes that just made me go ” Well let’s just keep piling it on” even though the surgery hasn’t happened yet.

People lurking all around. ( surgery prep ) X marks the spot.

The major nerve running through my jaw was going to have to be compromised completely since a good section was to be removed.  All those nerves in the lower jaw and neck area don’t like to be messed with.  Allot of knowledge, skill and rolling some dice had to come together in hopes of getting rid of this bad thing and keeping some functionality in the process.  The thing that is strange moving forward into describing and showing the surgery is I wasn’t feeling ill because of the cancer. Only a mild soreness which didn’t effect my daily life.

Nurse during pre op

That isn’t’ to say I’m not happy to this point it seems to be effectively removed it’s just I didn’t have that sick experience going in.  It’s kind of like I’m good and healthy then someone says ” Hey can we cut a piece of jaw out and use part of your leg tissue and bone to reconstruct?”, ” What no?”, ” Well we are doing it anyways”.  Then boom there you are wondering what the hell.  Then again I wouldn’t have wanted it to have grown to the point of effecting me in some negative way since I’m sure if it was at that point that would have been allot more worse than as it stood.

Around the end of November I embraced the whole process and just decided to face it head on.  Once that realization hit me it was easy to move forward, visit Dr’s, and hear the truth also make fun of myself and the whole thing surrounding it as odd as that may seem.

( note: anyone wanting more info on the months leading up to surgery please feel free to email me.)

Trying to look bad ass

No Explination needed.

PEG Tube

PEG Tube