That being said, here's today's report...

ALL GOOD NEWS!

(Basically.)

Tom is healing very nicely. So nicely that Dr. Z says he can skip the herbal tea (or rather, the roasted horse food) and have some de-caffeinated coffee. Not high test, but coffee nonetheless. (Still can't have tomatoes, citrus, vinegar, carbonation, alcohol, etcet etcet...but at least he can see it's working.)

At the time of the surgery a month ago, Dr. Zeitels had left the little bit of cancer on the left vocal cord so that during the initial healing that area wouldn't grow together with the area of the right vocal cord.

So mid-December (gotta check the date -- 15th or 16th, I think) Tom will have a much shorter procedure at Mass General to both remove the remaining cancer on the left vocal cord and to inject some of his body fat (probably from the stomach area) to start rebuilding the area of the right vocal cord. Dr. Z said he couldn't estimate how long or how many procedures will be necessary to rebuild the areas of the vocal cords. Everyone heals differently and differing amounts of fat is re-absorbed by the body, so it's hard to estimate. We'll just have to do it and wait and see.

A friend drove us down and back (and managed to incorporate a little work during the lift. If we'd had to take the train to Boston, we wouldn't have gotten home until after 6.

Linn