Waiting for vocalisation

Well here I am again folks getting ready for yet another operation. This is supposed to be a small one and just for once they are actually putting something IN rather than taking something out!

Very soon I will have my own genuine piece of technology inserted into my corpus and if it works then the chances are that I will once again be able to speak. Much to the annoyance of all of those who are no doubt delighted that I have been silenced by my illness.

Wonderful stuff GoreTex - or at least so I am told. I remember reading all about it when it came into the market around thirty years ago. A great new material which could give you protection from the rain and YET was porous enough to enable the material to breathe. Thus air molecules could pass back and forth but water molecules could not.

Who would have thought at that time that I would actually be grateful to have my rainware implanted into my neck!

As usual at around these times, I am in a blue funk thinking of all the things that can go wrong and wondering whether or not it would be safer to just leave well enough alone.

I have to say that I have been looking for books about the SAS (either British or Australian versions will do) as a way of bolstering my courage. They have this motto which is something like "Who dares wins!"

I guess life is like a lottery - you have to be in it to win it.

Someone (who shall remain nameless) wished me luck with this operation. I have to say I would prefer a good surgeon with a steady hand and a fabulous track record with these sorts of operations rather than luck.

Or am I missing something?

Progress

For those people, who have been following, my personal struggle with oesophageal cancer there is further news which may be of interest.

In the recent past I have mentioned that as part of the process of repairing my body again from the latest onset of this insidious cancer I managed to lose my voice thanks to something called unilateral vocal cord paralysis.

Having investigated a number of options I have been convinced that perhaps the most useful approach to the problem is to undergo some day surgery where under a local anesthetic (and some application of a sedative) I will have an incision from outside the neck and the placement within the vocal fold a small amount of GoreTex which hopefully will bulk up the tissue and so bring the currently paralysed vocal cord back into the middle position so that the other cord can meet it and so enable the vibration necessary to produce a voice.

With any luck this is likely to happen next month and following an overnight stay in hospital (just in case there are complications) I will come back home hopefully with the ability to vocalise again. I have been advised of possible consequences and of course risks but at the end of the day I am willing to take the risks simply because not doing anything is currently a very risky business as well as the risk of pneumonia from aspirating food and/or drink is high and frankly not being able to make oneself well understood is also playing a depressing role in life.

So having explored injections of stuff and other options this is the one I am opting for.

If any one has some experience with this form of treatment let me know and then please share your experiences.

Hydrogen Peroxide, oesophageal cancer and the desire to be blonde

I wonder if anyone else has been tempted to look into the Web Log scene and see if there are others afflicted by Oesophageal cancer who have written a BLOG or have linked some sites where there is information to be had?

I have had a look at the various search engines and typed in what I think is the correct spelling for Oesophageal Cancer and got some results.

More than I expected to be perfectly honest.

However when I decided to try a variation on the spelling - either to find those who cannot spell in English or sites that use the American variant of the word namely "Esophageal" Cancer then I really started to get results.

A recent article called "How Acid Reflux Leads to Esophageal Cancer - Discovered by Researchers" is among the more fascinating finds.

The article states (inter alia)

A particular enzyme is significantly higher in cancer cells that have been exposed to acid, leading to the overproduction of hydrogen peroxide, and offering a possible explanation for how acid reflux may lead to cancer of the esophagus, according to a recent study in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

The study found that the enzyme NOX5-S is affected by exposure to acid and that it produces stress on cells, activating genes that lead to DNA damage. For the first time, researchers have outlined the signaling pathway from cells damaged by acid, to the progression of esophageal cancer. They believe the same process may happen in the body when cells are exposed to acid reflux.

I don't know what you make of this, but from now on I am not going to read any more jokes about Blondes.

After all hydrogen peroxide used to be the weapon of choice for those teenagers who wanted to make a statement and become blond virtually overnight to join the "surfer" craze prevalent at the time.

Regardless of your ancestry, regardless of your skin and hair colour the trendy thing to do back in those days was to go out in the sun and get as brown as possible and then to dye your hair with hydrogen peroxide as a means of obtaining a blonde thatch.

I never succumbed to this teenage fascination for becoming what was known as a 'surfie', but apparently my body longed to be part of the crowd and if it was to be denied access to hydrogen peroxide on the outside then it decided to manufacture it from the inside!

Since staying out in the sun and getting brown is also an inducement for people to get skin cancer I suspect that those of us in the 1950's and 1960's who did take up the good old Aussie life style of sun, sand and surf may be exposed to greater risks of a painful death in our older age than others in the past.

Who would have thought back then that the 'healthy' life style advocated at the time would lead to something completely different?

Barretts Oesophagus

Information about this condition can be located at the following link:
Barretts Oesophagus

The result is a PDF file which of course requires a PDF reader at least.

On the same site there is even more information if you have progressed beyond Barretts Oesophagus to fully blown Oesophageal Cancer - check it out!

It is a shame that the site where I found this particular link (namely Health First a site published by the ACT Government) actually has to refer to an English source rather than Australian authorities on the subject.

Since both Barretts Oesophagus and Oesophageal Cancer are on the increase in this Territory AND that the Adenocarinoma is so deadly, it amazes me that the expertise in this community is not better harnessed nor made known to the people who live here. I guess the fact that there are less than 500,000 people in this place makes it small beer by comparison with other places in the world - but hey - this is where we live and we should be able to get advice about our local resources instead of having to traipse around the world. Even if do only do the walking with our fingers!