■

11/3 (日本語は後に続きます）

One difficulty I am facing is that I do not know my health base line yet. Pre-cancerous days, I sort of knew whether I had a serious symptom or not, because I knew my 50-year-old body well. If I had shoulder pain, I used a heat pad or called my masseuse. If I felt feverish, I went to bed early that night to prevent the cold getting worse.

I was panicked this morning when I woke up with a serious backache. I started wondering what was causing this pain. Was I feeling the pain from the pneumonia caused by the aspiration? Am I feeling the pain due to the back arthritis that was diagnosed a few years ago? Is it because I stopped the narcotic based painkiller? Is it possible that the heavy use of Tylenol finally got to my liver? After groaning and mourning on the bed for a while, I asked my son to rub my back (Mark left for Maine to write a paper which he will present in Australia in December) then called my oncologist.

In the meantime, my son brought forth a muscle rub from the bathroom drawer, and started applying it on my back, saying, “let’s try this because it won’t hurt even if it does not work.” Miraculously the pain disappeared with the rub; after all it was a simple muscle pain caused by my unnatural posture at night. And of course it was embarrassing to talk to my oncologist when he called back.

Even though I am recovering quite well from the surgery itself, I often wonder how I will deal with my other health issues in the future. Will I be able to take pills like everybody else even without my stomach? Will there be a type of medicine I will not be able to take because of esophagectomy? Will I be susceptible to certain kind of disease? …

I made a premature decision a few weeks ago and said “yes” to a half-day interpretation job on November 10. When an agent called me, I was feeling great and strong after the surgery. I was 100% tube fed, and was using the strong pain medicine then, but did not know that recovery process consumes a lot of energy and time. Even though I feel that I can fulfill the commitment most of the time, I lose confidence on a day like today.

However, committing to an assignment is forcing me to train myself; I have been walking at least a mile a day, and trying to eat as much as possible. I am hoping that pushing myself for this assignment will give me confidence like the assignment I took in August in the middle of esophagitis.