The end of this month will mark the one-year anniversary of my cancer surgery. If we can believe the doctors, they got it all. No more cancer. Zap! Gone! But the aftereffects of the five surgeries I’ve had so far are not fun, and there is a promise of more to come.

The most bothersome of the aftereffects is the constant, itching, burning and tearing of my eyes. I walk the aisles of the grocery store pushing the shopping cart with one hand and wiping tears out of my eyes and off my cheeks with the other hand. And there’s an open wound on my nose where there’s a screw in there holding me all together. That’s what the doctor told me on January 3rd. All this year since the first operation I didn’t even know about that screw. Now I imagine unscrewing it and pieces of my body falling all over the peanut butter aisle.

And then there are my hearing and vision problems. There is liquid behind my ear drum which renders my left ear completely deaf. Eventually the doctors will be able to create drainage for that. And it’s hard for me to wear my glasses because they press against the previously mentioned wound on my nose. Because of the hearing problems, I need closed captions on the TV, but I can’t read the closed captions without my glasses, which hurt my nose.

The surgeon I saw this week said that most of that will be fixed with a special glass tube (invented and manufactured in nearby Portland — he bragged about his fellow Northwest doctor). The miracle glass tube will have to be cleaned annually. I didn’t think to ask if the cleaning will be a surgical procedure or if they’ll take it out through my nostril—oooh yuck, doesn’t that sound lovely? 

The surgeon with whom I had this follow-up appointment said it was challenging “But you’re alive.”

Yes I am. The meaning I took from that is that the various surgeries played havoc with my nose and ears and eyes, but without those surgeries I would not be alive now. I don’t know how accurate that is, but this doctor was refreshingly honest and hopeful. He apologized for my case being such a challenge but said, I paraphrase: I’m a good doctor, really I am, and I’m not going to give up on you.”

So that’s where we are in my recovery. It’s going to be all right.