Visiting my primary-care physician in Florida a few times and two other specialists in 2017, I was assured I was fine. My incredibly attractive Vietnamese doctor charmingly told me to “stop kvetching,” suggesting I not obsess about the persistent sore throat that I’d been complaining about for months. She offered me a referral to a mental-health specialist in the area, implying, I believe, that my concern was bordering on the neurotic.
I asked her if she would refer me to the best E.N.T. doctor in central Florida. She reluctantly did. He was two hours away. I made an appointment for the following week.
Ushered into his office, I was asked why I was there. I told him about the inability of the specialists I had seen over the last year to find anything wrong with me even though I was something was. He shoved a scope down my throat and said something that was not comforting to me: “Jesus Christ, how did they miss this?”
Fairly certain I was not going to like his answer I asked what they had missed. “There’s a large growth on your larynx,” he answered, “and I don’t like the looks of it. I’m sending you for more tests and a biopsy.”
If he didn’t like the looks of it, I was pretty positive I wasn’t going to like it, either. Biopsy was not a word that inspired confidence.
When the tests came back, I drove the two hours to his office. His first words were “Sit down.” The underlying message in this inconsequential phrase translated into, “I have some very bad news for you.”
He said I had Stage 4 cancer, which because it had gone undiagnosed for at least a year had spread from my larynx to my pharynx, my thyroid, all my lymph nodes, and part of my tongue.
He referred me to the Orlando Cancer Center, “the best around.”
Those were the last words I remember hearing. My ears got really hot and stopped functioning. Though I could see his lips moving, I couldn’t hear a single word. It was like what happens when you lose the sound on your television.
He must have understood, He eventually signaled with his hands that it was time for me to leave his office.
I drove home in a state close to catatonic. I have no memory of the drive. That week, I had a series of tests and was admitted to Orlando Cancer Center, where I underwent a six-and-a-half-hour operation. A huge skin graft from my thigh was used to reconstruct a new throat for me.
My recuperation
Six weeks of radiation, five days a week, followed. A puncture procedure in my stomach accommodated a potential voice prosthetic, I spent four months on a feeding tube, eating nothing but three cans of Jevity per day. A wound machine on my thigh covered the area where the skin had been removed to construct my new throat.
I couldn’t shower for six weeks. My lymphedema was so pronounced that my face looked like an overstuffed pillow ravaged by angry wolves.
Thus began my recuperation. The only good news was that I lost 42 pounds in four months while on the feeding tube.
With the exception of my horribly swollen face and the gigantic, bloody crater of the wound on my thigh, I looked fabulous, I hadn’t looked this good since sophomore year in high school when I played on three varsity teams.
I couldn’t speak until the voice prosthetic, a device called a Transesophageal Voice Prosthetic (a T.E.P for short), was installed. My voice sounded remarkably like Louis Armsrong with a severe cold.
In spite of all this, the ordeal never seemed terrible or that I was suffering with something horrible, much to everyone’s surprise.
I found out three years later, over some beers with two good friends, that everyone thought I was going to die, a thought that occurred to me, not even once. I just plodded on, did what I had to, and survived the very real pain enjoying the wonderful painkillers that were liberally prescribed.
Surprisingly, I never even felt sorry for myself or thought that an injustice had been dropped on me, or that I had been wrongfully singled out to undergo this experience. I don’t even think I was angry at anyone, with the possible exception of myself for smoking for 47 years, not to mention the other toxic substances I had put into my body.
Yes, I was a little sad that I lived alone, but my daughter, sister, and three of my closest friends flew down to Florida in shifts to take care of me for months, never leaving me alone for more than a day or two. I felt blessed, that these people in my life cared enough about me to put their lives on hold to do this for me. I knew not everyone else in the world could say that.
Dolphin therapy
One afternoon, sitting on my screened porch overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway, watching dolphins and manatees play near my pontoon boat, I thought again about the whole experience.
It hadn’t been half as bad as it probably should have been. How come I didn’t suffer, feel despondent, sad, morose, angry, or have the negative experiences other cancer patients and survivors have experienced? Why hadn’t I felt horribly depressed and in need of therapy or antidepressants like so many others in my situation? Why wasn’t I overcome with debilitating sadness?
Two dolphins breached at the same time. They looked like a momma or daddy dolphin and their infant, leaping a good six feet out of the water like synchronized swimmers. I remembered playing my autoharp and singing for my daughter when she was a very young baby. She would try to sing along, look at me and smile. It would make me so happy, all was right in this world.
I hadn’t sung to her for almost 30 years. That was the moment that I realized I would never sing to my daughter again, never see her smile when I played and sang a song she especially liked.
That’s when I cried, for the first time in over a year, maybe longer. I cried uncontrollably for what seemed like forever.
Join the family! 
