Gneh.
Sorry for the further cancery postingage. I just can't seem to get my head around work. Specifically, I can't understand why a person who is manifestly unable to maintain their own airway would be moved off a ventilator on a critical-care unit and into a floor bed, only to decompensate within about twenty minutes and have to be reintubated and returned to the CCU.
Sometimes cancer is easier than dealing with people. Especially doctor-people. Especially doctor-people who are not experts in patients who can't breathe and who therefore choose to ignore the advice of those doctors who specialize in the Not-Breathing Patient.
Anyway, I got an appointment with Obdurator-Dude today. For those of you who slept through the first half of class, an obdurator is a plastic widget that closes an open palate. Given that I'm going to lose a nice chunk of my palate during surgery, I'll kind of need an obdurator so I don't have macaroni and cheese coming out my nose every time I speak.
Lovely.
Apparently these things are made of solid 26-karat Unobtainium with a Marvellium augment. The up-front cost of the damned thing--and this is actually about a third of the real cost--is going to be more than a thousand smackers. Don't leave your obdurator on the cafeteria tray, kiddo!
Don't let this be you!
Plus, the one guy in the state with whom my surgeon likes to do business is an inconveniently long way away, in an inconvenient part of Yeehawville. Oh, well. They're seeing me tomorrow for X-rays and molds (eugh gneh gneh herk bleh) and bleeding and so on. If this dude is not attired in green lederhosen, sitting at a workbench, carefully sculpting each prosthetic by hand as his eyes twinkle over his half-moon glasses and bluebirds twitter around him, I am going to be really fucking disappointed. You'd think for three grand you'd get a couple of bluebirds.
I have also ordered several Books On Cancer. This is an important step in the Holy Shit I Guess I Really Do Have Cancer process, as I generally only read about things in real honest to Frog books that I want to know more about. The Interwebs are fine and all, but highlighters don't work on my LCD screen. All these books have to do with emotional wellness and nutrition, two subjects about which I do not know nearly enough. Plus, I've got a buddy doing research on those things for me, so I think I'm set there.
Holy shit. I guess I really do have cancer.
And with that, I'm going to go have a sandwich.