I
have always had a rather noticeably high tolerance to pain. Throughout my so
called growing years I played a variety of full contact sports and had my fair
share of injuries because of it. But, as I grew older, not all of my injuries
were sports related.
Let’s
just say that I was a bit of an asshole and some of it was self inflicted, or
at least caused by me, due to an influence that may or may not have been
inflicted by a substance…or two…sometimes three…at a time. But that’s not the
point here.
Just
to give an example or two, of injury not substance, I vividly remember playing
football in my youth as an offensive lineman and taking a direct helmet hit to
the chest. I broke two ribs. Sure I had a bit of trouble breathing, but got
patched up on the sidelines and went back into the game.
Actually
they wrapped a piece of foam around my ribs and just taped it really tight and
I was good to go. Try pulling that off with the parents today coach. Yeah it’s
what you did then. Suck it up princess.
How
about the time in my adult years when I was playing softball for a bar
sponsored team. Raise your hand if you can relate. Just about everybody who has
played a sport as an adult has at one time or another been sponsored by a bar or
aspired to be sponsored by a bar. Après game beers. You did so.
Anyway,
while playing first base for my provincial championship team, which I must say
I was pretty awesome at, I took a line drive in the inside of my shin. Which
any ball player will tell you that you need to put your body in front of the
ball as well as your glove so that the ball does not get past you even if it
gets past your glove.
Well
it got past my glove. Needless to say that my leg got there faster than my hand
and the impact caused not just muscle bruising but damage to the membrane that
is between the muscle and the bone. Oh yeah, I failed to mention the hairline
fracture to my shin bone or Tibia as doctors like to call it. I went to work
the next day.
I
was not trying to impress anyone or prove anything. I had bills to pay and
that’s what you did, you continued to earn a living, and should do, but people
don’t anymore.
But
let’s get to the real topic here. All of this explanation was an attempt to
give perspective to the topic. I have a rather high pain tolerance. Or so I
thought until now.
Anyone
close to me knows what I went though for my Cancer treatment. I have met some
fantastic people because of it and many of them experienced what I did and
much, much more. I am the fortunate one of what I call “the original six”. No I
won’t tell you the names, they know who they are.
Without
going into complete detail and doing some finger pointing, let’s just say that
I found out who my friends really are and which of my family members showed
their true colours.
I
had two surgeries prior to my doing any form of Chemotherapy or Radiation
treatment. The first surgery was to remove the source Cancer from my throat
which the doctor called a Tonsillectomy plus. This really meant that he removed
my tonsils and excavated a portion of my throat to ensure that the source
Cancer was removed.
The 31 Rounds of Chemotherapy and the 35
Radiation treatments that happened over the course of 7 weeks, yes I was
pounded with both treatments daily, was to eliminate the secondary tumor in my
neck that they could not remove surgically due to the location, which was
wrapped around my jugular vein and 4 centimeters long.
Now
this took longer than I wanted getting to the point and I feel I should cut this
into two parts.
The
second part will contain the after surgery effects and the lack of swallowing
ability as well as a rather descriptive attempt at portraying the experience of
intense pain.
To
be continued.
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