https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21663210

Been through the cancer game.

Three months of mouth radiation and chemo. They numbed me and poked a hole through my stomach to insert a feeding tube since swallowing wasn't going happen after week 5 of radiation kicked in.

The feeding tube was interesting. This was the "You have got to be fucking shitting me Monday".

I basically did not use DDG to look into what was going to happen to me. I wanted to know nothing about chemo, radiation, feeding tubes, and all the other horrors that would come my way. Clean slate, go in ignorant, just deal with it as it happens. This turned out to be the best approach. Like a frog in a warming crock pot. You adjust while your family gazes in horror as you lose your hair and 25% of your mass.

But back to Monday. Radiation at 9AM. Feeding tube at 10AM. Chemo at 2PM. Radiation was nothing. Get my head put in the mesh mask made during the simulation and you go in the machine for 20 minutes. They have Pandora so you can have music piped in during the treatment. I picked New Order.

Then the feeding tube. I was put into the operating room. Then put to sleep. Then I woke up with my sister staring at me in a room that was not the operating room. And I was told they couldn't do the tube. And plan B was needed. I was not told what plan b was until the horrors of plan b were already over. We will get back to plan b in a bit.

Now I will talk about round one of chemo. 2 liters of saline in the vein. Tiny bag of cisplatin. Then two more liters of saline. The entire thing would take 4 hours. But my god. I was nearly cocaine amped. It was a massive rush after chemo for a few weeks. Then it got different and I don't really want to talk about that. There is a reason my radiologist said to remove guns from the house. I can see how suicide would be a good idea.

Back to the feeding tube. They had to send me off to interventional radiology. They had to do a scan while installing the tube. From what I gather my stomach rides high under the ribs and they had to go in through my mouth and push my stomach down and then poke a hole between my stomach and the outside world. And then three things I would describe as "buttons" were stitched in to keep everything in place.

If you get a normal feeding tube you get Advil after you are done. I got 16 hours in a bed with a button that would call someone for a injection of something that would put me to sleep for hours. It was lovely. Like I said. I like drugs.

But I was given Hydromorphone to deal with the insane pain. This is when I realized opioids do fuck-all for me.

But opioids. I just watched that Pharmacist thing on Netflix. And I am kinda pissed off.

Really? Like heroin? When you have cancer you are showered with pills. I got a ton of OXY and they didn't really help. Lorazepam (the best) and Hydrocodone helped the most.

In the documentary they compared OXY to heroin. I get a bit of pain relieve from it (but I have never used it outside cancer). And they said you get high from it. I don't. And I asked my sister and she said oxy didn't get her high either. So I feel a bit cheated. And I have hundreds of oxy just sitting in my medicine cabinet.