Chapter 2: The journey begins

Thanksgiving and Christmas are my two favorite holidays. They both involve elaborate dinners with some of the best tastes around. For many years I would overeat to the extent of pain since I cannot resist all that food topped off with mince meat, pecan or pumpkin pies. I truly love to eat.

Well in 2012 I started to experience trouble swallowing some of my favorite foods. It got to the point that I no longer enjoyed a big meal. It took some time to convince me that I needed to consult my doctor about my swallowing problem.

My family doctor made an appointment for me to have a barium swallow test done. They fed me a barium milkshake and watched as I swallowed it on the x-ray machine. They had me do it in various different positions as they watched. I heard the doctor make some interesting sounds like uh-uh, okay, yup and various other unintelligible grunts telling me absolutely nothing.

After the test was done the doctor and I had a discussion of what he was able to see. When all was said and done he told me that I had a condition common to older people where the muscles of the esophagus get out of sequence to the point where peristalsis is halted and the food is lodged in place. The only way to dislodge the food was to swallow water or milk. I asked the doctor what treatment there was for the condition. He advised me that there is no treatment for the malady and drinking is the only solution.

A couple of weeks later my family doctor, without consulting me, made an appointment for me to have an endoscopy test run. I took the previous doctor's word for it that there was no cure for my problem and figured any test would be a waste of time and money so I therefore canceled the appointment.

A few months later I got a letter from the endoscopy doctor's office wanting some information. I figured there was no harm answering their questions so I sent them the information. The doctor then convinced me that based on what he had read from the doctor who had done the swallow test that an endoscopy would be a good idea. I gave in and on September 26^th reported to his office to have the test run. I had my wife drive me there since I would have to be put under for the test.

After the test there was a consult with the doctor who ran the test. He told me that my esophagus was constricted down to a small opening the size of a soda straw so he did what he called a dilatation to open it up. He went on to tell me that he found a couple suspicious areas where he suspected that there was a malignancy causing my problem. He took a couple of biopsy samples and told me that he would let me know what they showed. A few days later I met with his physician's assistant who told me that I did indeed have cancer of the esophagus.

I was not too sure why but my doctor decided that I needed an endoscopic ultrasound test. So October 7^th I went to the hospital where they ran that test. The doctor who ran that test told me that he saw some lymph node involvement which could be malignant but he was not too sure. So then it was off to another office on October 15^th to have a PET scan run. For those of you who don't know, PET stands for positron emissive tomography. They inject you with a radioactive isotope and then scan for the radiation to build up in certain parts of your body. That build-up takes place in fast growing cells which are, by definition, malignant. By that time I was under the care of an oncologist since it was a given that I did indeed have some form and degree of cancer.

My oncologist met with me and told me that the PET scan did show cancer and also indicated some liver involvement and surgery was no longer an option. For me this was good news since the plan previously was to undergo radiation five days a week and chemo one day a week. Once the esophagus tumors were shrunk enough a section of my esophagus would be cut out and my stomach relocated up by my shoulder. Just the sound of that procedure was enough to set me off kicking and screaming. With the suspected liver involvement the surgery would be ruled out.