The next step was to have a partial neck dissection to remove the cancerous lymph nodes in my neck.
Prior to surgery, the surgeon went over all the potential challenges. There are a lot of nerves in the neck - nerves to the arm, the diaphragm, the voice box, and so on. It was a sobering thought to think that I might not be able to raise my arm above my head, or worse - have difficulty breathing should anything go wrong. I trusted my doctor - this was the same surgeon who has operated on my tongue. He was highly regarded among his colleagues at the hospital as being extremely knowledgeable in the field of head and neck cancers. But still - I couldn't help but wonder... would I be that one exception to his stellar track record?
The second surgery occurred on February 10, 2012. As it turned out, it was a LOT easier that the first one by far - I only stayed in the hospital one night. The surgery itself took almost as long as the other one, though - almost 4 hours. I only had cancer in two small lymph nodes, but the surgeon took a bunch of the surrounding nodes to make sure it hadn't spread further. So once again, the surgical team had to wait around for the pathology to come back before they could finish. All in all, they took between 30 and 40 nodes; we have between 500 & 600 in our bodies and there are a lot in the neck area. All but two were free of cancer, so this was good news.
The doctor did encounter one surprise: the nerve that normally runs along the lower jaw was not where it was supposed to be - it was lower down in my neck area - right in the way of where he needed to operate! So he moved it back to where it was supposed to be.
This time, I woke up in the regular recovery room with no breathing or feeding tubes and was soon put into a regular room. I left the next morning, after chowing down on a breakfast of real food: scrambled eggs and french toast. On the way home, I looked at my watch and realized that the team over at the winery where I worked on weekends would be right in the middle of setting up for that day's tastings. I decided to surprise them with a quick visit. It felt good to be in a place I looked forward to going to and being around my friends. It's good to get out and try to do the normal things in your everyday life, even though you're going through this process. You tend to feel isolated if all you do is see doctors.
I didn't realize it when I was in the winery, but the whole right side of my face was numb. I discovered this when I got home. I sat in my easy chair and leaned on my hand and couldn't feel it! WTF?!! The doctor had warned me that I could have some numbness.
In addition to the expected bandage on the incision, I had what is called a "J-P drain." A small flexible tube was under the skin right about where my collarbone was; drainage from the incision dripped out of the tube and collected in a palm-sized, bulb-shaped container that I emptied a couple of times a day. There wasn't much liquid coming out, so I was able to go back to the doctor on Monday to have it removed. The sutures used on my neck were internal, so there was nothing there to remove.
I was rather disappointed to discover the surgery had set me back a week or two on what had been fairly regular progress on getting back to normal eating. It was hard to swallow again, and I had to use the suction machine a few more times. I went back to eating softer foods, too. I really don't think I want to eat cottage cheese ever again.
But over a period of a few days, it started to improve, little by little each day. Unfortunately, wine tastes like medicine and alcohol. Blech! The areas of numbness and tingling on my right cheek, ear and part of my head are steadily shrinking. I was told it could take months, or even be permanent but a lot of the tingling was gone in a little over a month. Right around my jaw line is still pretty numb.
Over the course of the next few weeks, we took family out to lunch, visited friends and stopped by the winery a couple of more times... just to let them know they hadn't cut the sarcasm out of my tongue. Even though I sound like Mr. Magoo.
Now it was time for the third phase of my treatment - radiation therapy.
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