Dear V-8 Buick caregivers, This will be the 10th year that I have created photo Christmas cards featuring my trusty wagon. This year's card is different for reasons that will be explained: You can click on the image for an enlargement. Yes the card needs some explaining. This is what was printed on the back of the card: It has been a tough year for me and the whole family. When you are caring for everyone else - your health gets lowest priority. Eventually, what turned to be skin cancer tumors could no longer be ignored. Since August, I have had Mohs surgeries to remove 5 tumors - 4 of which were on my face, and the worst surgery is still to come. For a while, my face was looking a lot like our venerable 1965 Buick Special after she was struck on Thanksgiving Eve 2010. My journey of healing reminded me of the arduous effort to restore our 56 year old family heirloom wagon. The parallels inspired this card. Christmas used to be a solemn matter of faith. However, science has made us so confident that humanity insisted we could create our own hope in a secure future. Now that security seems dashed as science and technology has seriously stumbled in a time of great need. Our future is anything but certain, and those difficult "meaning of life" questions are nagging all of us. Like self-congratulation, self-made hope seems hollow and in vain - the thirst for meaning and purpose is never quenched. Now more than ever, Christmas beseeches us to rediscover our hope in an eternal good. Though these pictures, I have tried to portray my faith journey through a most difficult year. Such has been my 2021 . . . Edouard
Dear thebuick and V-8 Buick caregivers in search of optimism, Well, I don't know if this exactly counts as trying to be hopeful and positive but there is a very nice restoration of a 1967 24 foot Airstream Tradewind by Blueberry Hill Classics that they call "Jet Set Judy": https://blueberryhillclassics.com/1967-airstream-jet-set-judy Okay definitely off-topic, but definitely some pretty mid-60s vintage restoration eye-candy. Cheers, Edouard
Dear V-8 Buick caregivers, Much has changed since my Christmas card in which I described my current struggles with skin cancer tumors. The first week of January I met with a doctor (and professor) from the University of California, San Francisco's division of Facial Reconstructive Surgery. That's about as specialized as things get. Things didn't get off to a good start. One of the residence (doctor in training) spotted a large growth on the right side of my nose. Another Ear's Nose and Throat specialist had already uncovered this back in October, but it was concluded it must be removed at the same time as the very large basal cell cancer tumor on the left side of my nose. Doing so would involve scooping out some of the cartilage of my nose. Until then, I had been told there would be 2 surgical procedures: a first operation to remove the tumors performed by a specialist in so-called Mohs surgery, then a second operation to reconstruct the nose. Having the problem before him, the reconstructive surgeon immediately proposed, not 1, but 3 reconstructive operations. This Wednesday (January 26th) is Mohs surgeries to remove the tumors. They will remove the tumors, control the bleeding, and check that they have "clear edges" (confirm that every last been of cancerous tissue has been removed.) Once this has been achieved, they will bandage the region as best as they can, and send me home. The following morning, Thursday, the 27th will be the first of the 3 reconstructive surgeries. The reconstructive surgeon will make the skin graph from my forehead and repair the nose to first approximation. He will in the same operation remove the growth that is blocking the other nostril. That will leave damaged cartilage and effectively turn my nose into a blob of flesh without structure. However, that assembly will need 3 weeks to heal before the next step. Sometime in late February, the surgeon will perform a second operation which will graph in some cartilage to repair the structure of my nose and give it a normal appearance. It will require another 3 weeks to heal from that. Finally, in mid-March sometime, he needs to perform one more operation to complete the restoration of the nose, which in part, involves completing the separation of the skin graph from the forehead. This is definitely a long-haul of medical procedures. Based on my previous surgeries, I'm expecting to be in really difficult straights for a while. I finally have some instructions for the operation, and as expected, my face will suffer from a lot of swelling. Removing the tumor over my right eye resulted in sufficient swelling that I had difficulty seeing. Since this procedure will involve both my nose and the forehead where the skin graph will be taken I suspect my face will swell up like I had been stun by a dozen bees or more. Under those circumstances, I suspect using a computer will become difficult. As a result I might be scarce on this forum from time to time. I'm not supposed to wear glasses until my nose is fully repaired. Since I need glasses to drive, the current assessment is that I won't be driving until the end of March. Last Friday, I took Biquette out for one last outing before I'm out of commission. While there I took this photo on front of some winter trees: Thanks for your support. I'll try to keep everyone posted as I attempt to navigate the long and difficult road ahead. Edouard
Edouard, Wishing you the best of all possible outcomes for what must be a very scary time. Please update us as able! Devon
Here's hoping 2022 and beyond find you and your loved ones in better health Edouard.....God Bless Bob H.
Thanks everyone for your kind thoughts and prayers, I wish I could say otherwise, but I've never felt so alone in my life. I think it needs to be said - science has really let down all of us. Some of my earliest childhood memories are of newscasters reporting on the process to cure cancer. Yet, tomorrow I'll endure another Mohs surgery. The technique was developed by Frederic Mohs while he was still a medical student in 1938. What should we think if, after all the research on cancer that has happened in my lifetime, the best treatment for skin cancer was developed by a student almost a century ago? Yet for me, faith isn't any easier to come by. Most of us do not understand the real intentions of the freedom of religion found in the bill of rights. The founding fathers were deeply committed Christians. They had no doubt about the ultimate reality of things. To them, the multiple Christian denomination were like the multiple branches of government in the Constitution: dividing power to prevent abuse. In the end, just as all branches of government would ultimately work for the common good of everyone, they expected all Christian denominations would come to a common understanding of Christian faith. Moreover, these were men of the Enlightenment. Far from seeing science and religion as in conflict, they expected science would ultimately reveal God's true purpose in all things God created. After all, even reason and wisdom should be gifts from God. Shouldn't they be used to reveal God's goodness and why the human journey had to be this way? If the founding fathers could be miraculously transported to today, I think they would be even more horrified by the state of religion than what has happened to their carefully thought out experiment in government. If in 200 years we managed to put humans on the moon, why are we still unable to achieve a universal peace with a creator that loves us? In the end the question for me is the same question we all face sooner or later: is the suffering I'm about to go through in vain? Whatever the answer to that question - nobody should have to suspend their intellect and education in order to have access to that answer. Edouard
Dear V-8 Buick fans of a certain rascally wagon, I wanted to update everyone as to how this past week's two surgeries went. As feared, it has been quite an ordeal. The Wednesday surgeries were extremely tough. As usual, the cancer surgeon should have used more anaesthetic and it took a very long time to completely remove all the cancer from my nose. The surgery started at 9:30 am and there was a long wait while the pathology lab looked over what was removed. The surgeon made a decent guess but there was still some cancerous tissue left. So there was a second round of cutting in the early afternoon. They didn't finally bandage me up and send me home until around 3:30 pm. That night wasn't so bad. I'm not sure why though. I had to get up at 4:15 to be at the second surgery site at 5:30 am on Thursday. I guess the pre-operation process went okay. I don't remember anything about it. However, when I woke in the recovery room I was extremely weak. I could hardly move, much less make to a car to come home. I didn't have to argue much, the reconstructive surgeon concluded I would have to spend the night in the hospital. However, that didn't go well. For whatever reason, they couldn't manage to find a bed for me. I stayed in the recovery room from about 12 noon to 9:30 pm. I'm extremely thankful to the recovery room nurse that stayed with me long past her shift. When I finally got a bed in the hospital the night nurse was also kind and helpful. The pain medications allowed me to sleep a bit so that I could recover my strength some. By the morning (Friday) I could walk to the bathroom and felt strong enough to be discharged. It took some fumbling to make that happen, but I was finally home at noon. I'm not much to look at. My face is a bloody mess and, as expected, my new nose is an ugly blob of flesh. The surgeon ran into some sort of problem securing the flesh on my nose. As a result I have stitches along the left side of my cheek to my lip and probably another mysterious stitch in the middle of my lip. The flesh around my left eye is badly bruised and swollen. The skin graph from my forehead has a blob of flesh carrying the blood supply from my forehead to the reconstructed nose. That blob is also obstructing my left eye making seeing difficult. My body seems to have effectively shutdown and it is taking time to get all systems operational once more. I've had to write this in small periods of time before my eyes became too tired to continue. The good news is that the reconstructive surgeon did what would seem to be the impossible. He created from a flap of forehead skin a first approximation of a nose. Moreover, while it is ugly, it is already doing its job: allowing me to breath. I was really dreading these first few days being only able to breath through my mouth, but even at this early stage the nose allowing me to breath a bit when eating. That's a big improvement in the comfort level. Still, there is a roughly 4" x 4" flap of skin that has been scooped out of my forehead and scalp. Judging from low long it took my shoulder to heal from a similar sized wound produced by removing a tumor in August, it will take months to recover. That's the status report to this moment. The first follow-up appointment with the reconstructive surgeon is this Tuesday. Hopefully some of the stitches will start to come out and I'll finally be able eat more comfortably. Sorry that I haven't kept up with any replies. I just cannot see well enough to read for more than a few minutes. Edouard
Dear V-8 Buick fans of a certain rascally wagon, A quick update. This past Tuesday the stitches from the first surgery finally came out. I don't fully understand the purpose, but the skin graph for the new nose had to be secured to my cheek and lip. Getting those stitches out was unexpectedly painful and the left side of my mouth is still partially numb. The whole region is finally healing and that is something of a strange experience. As the doctor described, there is a blob of flesh secured to what was remained of the right side of my nose. There is an abrupt transition from the graphed skin to what looks like a normal nose. The new graph is not surprisingly swollen so there isn't much air flow on the left side. So I'm vulnerable to congestion. To avoid that, I "try" to sleep almost sitting up. However, that isn't exactly the most restful position! I hadn't shaved in over a week. Finally the itching was too much and I timidly removed the "jungle" of beard in stages. You don't realize how pleasant it is to be clean shaven until you can't do it for a while! The next surgery is scheduled for Thursday, February 17th. In that operation, the reconstructive surgeon will insert some cartilage to turn the blob of flesh into a normal nose. He will also "thin" the flesh of the nose to a more normal thickness. I'm not sure I want to know how he is going to do that! In the meantime trying to get back more to a normal life. I still don't have very clear vision, so computer time is limited. Thanks again everyone! Edouard
