successful surgery!

Hi everyone! I was released from Stanford today and am home. I haven't had to take one pain pill since the surgery! I have some soreness, and the doctors said my voice would actually get worse before it gets better. I'm having some troubles breathing and swallowing, but they said that was all normal. The breathing problem is due to phlegm that started from the surgery. The swallowing issue is because they had to cut muscles that help me swallow in order to get where they needed to go. Both problems will clear up--hopefully very soon. He rotated my left vocal cord to the midpoint so that my right cord could meet it. He also grafted part of a nerve from another place in my neck to repair my damaged recurrent laryngeal nerve, and my singing voice won't be back to normal for a few months (3-4), but the speaking voice should be back much sooner. Right now I'm still having troubles talking on the phone, but as soon as it heals I'll be calling you! They also had to cut through many nerves that go to the skin on my face, so the bottom left side of my face and neck are completely numb on the outside. It could be six months to a year for that to completely heal. No big deal. It's not really bothersome. Both my doc and his assistant said the surgery went very well. In fact, the assistant said, "I was right next to him and was his right-hand man the entire time, and I can tell you the surgery could not have gone more perfectly." As if I don't know why. Thank you all so much for the prayers & emails. They help to heal me both mentally and physically!

Hello everyone,
I wanted to quickly update you on my City of Hope visit yesterday. They were wonderful. It was great to hear (and validating) that after reviewing all of my info, the totally agree with my course of treatment from what I've already had to where we are planning to go from here. My doc will be very happy and his head can now get even bigger. :)
My surgery on the paralyzed left vocal cord is on Friday and I have been counting down the days. Please keep all the medical professionals working on me, my doc and me in your thoughts and prayers on Friday at 1:00 as I have my surgery. I pray that it will be successful and that I will be TALKING and SINGING His praises again very soon!! I can't wait to be TALKING with you all again!

Miraculous!

Well, I got my PET scan results, and it is a miracle! The decrease in size & especially cancerous activity is so significant that we are going to stop chemo! We will just have monthly checks for now. The miraculous thing is that usually I have PET scans in-between rounds of chemo, but in this case I have been off chemo for six weeks and we still had this significant decrease. Originally they always told me that even if we had a decrease, we would probably still go a few more rounds of chemo before we stopped. So I'm assuming that it must have been quite a bit for them to say we could stop for a while. Anyway, I'm very happy.
Also, thanks to my incredible aunt Ani, I am flying to southern California on Tuesday to get a second opinion on my cancer at City of Hope. It will be a day-long trip and then my long-awaited surgery for my voice is a week from tomorrow on Friday, July 24th! I'm counting down the days! Please keep me in your prayers, for the City of Hope visit to be helpful and the surgery on Friday to be successful. I am so thankful to God for this wonderful news & thankful to all of you for the prayers of support!