MY RETURN

         LCdr George T. Fraser – 1975 CFB Kingston

Many of you may recall that back in February, 2010 I signed off and told you I was entering hospital for major surgery and that I might or might not be back.

Through the Grace of God and your prayers and best wishes I made it and am now at home recuperating and if I dare say so, feeling quite good.

Allow me to bore you with what happened surrounding my operation. As many of you may recall this was my third bout with cancer. Colon, neck and this one the throat. I sat with the two top surgeons at Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH) in Toronto who advised me they could operate with a good chance of success but that failure was a possibility. I asked what was the alternative to the surgery and they told me two months and I would be dead. They advised me to go home and think about it. I did and discussed with Carmen and decided to go for the surgery. I didnt want to use up many days of the two months  grace they gave me so made up my mind very quickly and called back to PMH and said, “let’s get it on.”

March 3, I was admitted to the Toronto General Hospital. March 4, I underwent an eleven and half operation. The result of which is that they removed my tongue and voice box. I will never speak again nor be able to eat solid food. Also of utmost concern to me was that I lost forever my Cape Breton Accent. I knew this going in and decided that I could live with that and was not yet ready for the alternative. I spent 28 days in hospital and was released April 1, in time to enjoy Easter Weekend with visitors; Marilyn and Jim Broderick, Judy and Ed McCready (my sisters) and my brother Doc (Simon). After describing what I would like to have in our rec room to enable me to speak to folks, my nephew Mark Watson knew exactly what I wanted and went out and purchased a HD TV and a wireless keyboard. These combined with the appropriate lap top enables me to sit in my chair and display on screen what I want to say. All present can read it. Works very well. While in hospital Carmen learned of  this program where text can be converted into voice. Mark downloaded the FREE version and I played with it. Since then I upgraded for $50.00 which provides for clearer voice and a definitely better program. It is quite simple, you just type your thoughts down and then make a phone call and activate the program with your PC speaker adjacent to the phone. Works great after the initial shock of the recipient. It is like telephony you talk and when finished the other chap talks and so on and so on.

With Carmen’s TLC and patience I am doing quite nicely. I feed myself through a feeder into the stomach seven 250 ml cans per day. In addition and on a regular basis, I have tea, water, chocolate milk, ice cream, juices and ice cream and puddings. Carmen has blended strawberries, rasberries and rhubard which all goes down nicely. I at times even have a sensation of taste and smell. Strange, if I burp I can smell the food and get a taste as well. Great thing is that I am now back driving and have no pain and have started some light exercises. I do have a permanent hole in my throat/chest area which enables me to breath – no swimming or it’s curtains. The specialists tell me this will give me another eight to ten years – we will see.

Now back to reality. Many of you have been wondering when I might be reactivting my Blog and I have been tossing the idea around for some time. In order to come back on stream I will no doubt be able to continue to publish items that might be of interest to you about Alder Point and area but I will be obliged to go a little further afield and discuss topics of interest about our beloved Island – Cape Breton. In keeping with this new approach, I have renamed the Blog “Cape Breton News”.

My offer still stands, if you have thoughts and suggestions of issues that you think may be of interest, scribble them down and get them off to me. In the meantime, I should again like to thank you all for your generous prayers, best wishes, emails and supportive thoughts over these past months.