I'm HOME!

Hey Guys and Gals I SO appreciate all the prayers and kind words. When Rory (HDCOlt51) told my wife about all the support we were getting from all of you it really helped her, she told me I had a lot of people pulling for me.

HDCOLT51 thanks for updating everyone, you are a great friend.

I won't lie it was absolutely miserable, I begged God to take me the first and second night, I didn't think I could suffer through it anymore.

Not so much when I wanted it but when I needed it the most I received Grace.

On Wednesday I got that nasty NG tube out of my nose that helped me with being able to swallow. It was better then after the radiation had caused esophagitis. They also pulled the Foley catheter, those of you who have had one no how good/bad it is to get that out. It took me a little bit to feel confident that I now controlled urination.

I had a male nurse who was amazing, he let me add my med's to the tube and started letting me get up and down on my own, connecting and disconnecting all the wires, tubes, and apparatus. I started doing as many laps as I could around the unit.

I actually got stopped several times, the nurses were not used to ICU patients carrying their chest tube drain (they called it a suitcase) and walking around without escort. The nurses only have two patients and the ones who had me said I was trying to put them out of work LOL. This and our makers help started to give me more confidence that I could pull this off.

Thursday they pulled the neck drain and let me wear PJs.

Friday they pulled the Chest tube, that left a big nasty hole! I was starting to feel semi human now.

Today they pulled off everything else except the feeding tube and sent me home.

I'm sore as all get out, tired and still have a lot of recovering to do, but I can't thank everyone enough for all the support, prayers and kind words of encouragement!

One of the procedures is called a neck Disectomy (sounds weird like disecting a frog!) and the other was the esophagectomy.

The pathology reports came back and the lymph nodes they didn't remove were all negative and while I still have some Barretts esophagus they feel like they got all the cancer. Either way I plan to work on recovery and start living whatever time I have left at 100MPH.

God Bless you all!