I came within a hair's breadth of spending Christmas in the hospital.

For about two weeks before Christmas, my days and nights were spent mostly in bed, fighting off nausea and never getting fully rested.

Mary fed me through my stomach tube. Various medicines didn't always keep the food down.

On Christmas Eve I had to have my weekly blood withdrawal at Physician's Automated Lab. This is how they measure my hydration and immune system. So far it's been pretty good.

These trips are a continuing series of needle pokes into my skin for blood or medicine. Since this began in September I've been poked 24 times.

 Here's what I've learned. You look away when they poke. Just another little thing to endure.

On Christmas Eve, my normal lab was closed that afternoon so we drove to the main center at 28th and H Streets. It was about 2:30 p.m. and as soon as we got there, I reached for my blue pippyup bag we carry in the Mercedes.

That saved a big mess in our Mercedes. I dumped the bag in a trash container outside and went in for my blood draw. You just have to finish things in this process.

By Christmas morning, I threw up three more times. It seemed hopeless at trying to keep anything down. But at noon, I tried one more can of Ensure. It stayed down and I stayed home.

We had a nice family (Mary, her daughter Lori, and I) Christmas at 3 p.m., the first time all day I had strength to sit up.

By this time, I can barely talk, what with all the tongue sores and other guck in my mouth.

A couple days later, I finished my 30th radiation treatment. I went in for a CAT scan to see what's left of the tumor. I don't have the results yet, but a new radiation plan is being prepared for the final 9 doses.

I was hoping to be finished by Jan. 11, but now it looks like it will be almost a week or more later.

Right now (Dec. 31), I haven't had treatments for four days. This has allowed some improvement so I can write this and keep six cans of Ensure down per day.

Ativan at night is still my new favorite friend. Mary during the day is my angel.

Zofran and a suppository called Compazine have kept food down during the day.

In the midst of all this, I had to get my driver's license renewed. We made an appointment on Dec. 28. It took a half hour. But they made me take a new picture of my "cancer look."

I pity the poor people who ask for my identification. It's just one of those things we have to endure.

Tickle.

What a cute word.

Except in a cancer patient when tickle can be insidious.

As in a tickle on the throat.

That makes you cough. Coughing robs your sleep. It also precedes pippyup. That propels you to the porcelain, which also robs your sleep.

Then on especially bad pippyups, your throat is seared. Swallowing, which you do right after coughing, hurts. Not good for sleep either.

The above is a nutshell of how I was for a week after my last chemo treatment on Dec. 6. I'd write a book about it and call it Misery, but this other Stephen (King) guy pre-empted me.

Let's go back to the searing throat, shall we? On the Friday and Saturday night after the chemo, it just hurt too much to swallow.

Well, I have this back up plan for getting food into my belly. The previously mentioned stomach tube.

Beginning that Sunday, that's now how I eat. Equal parts Ensure and water. (Warm water, I might note, because cold water makes my tummy shiver).

The Ensure comes in three flavors -- vanilla, strawberry and chocolate, a regular Neapolitan. I wouldn't taste any of them if I didn't burp once in awhile.

I fed myself on Sunday. What an arduous process of filling up the big plastic syringe, laying it down, opening the tube, squeezing it so it doesn't leak,  putting the syringe in, trying to push the plunger down with one hand, and when done, squeezing the tube with one hand, removing the tube with the other, and plugging the tube so we can do it all over again. All while standing up as you are exhausted from the previously noted lack of sleep.

I did that three times on Sunday and it took nearly all the strength I had.

So I enlisted the help of my wife, Mary. She skyrocketed on my lovability chart. She can do in 10 to 15 minutes what it took me more than a half hour to do. And she gets in two cans while I could only do one.

I have to eat six cans a day. Otherwise I will become too skinny. No one likes a skinny man.

Or one with a neck that looks like blotched, sunburned, wrinkly skin like an old desert prospector who doesn't have enough sense to seek some shade.

This unattractive new look of mine comes from 20-plus radiation treatments to my neck. (I have throat cancer for the new readers)

Combine radiation and chemo, and you get one sick laddie. The chemo effects should have ended by the next Thursday, but Wednesday night was a regular well-worn path to the pippyup tank.

Dr. Dean Davis, my radiation oncologist at the Florence Wheeler Cancer Center by Mercy Hospital, took pity on me. He prescribed Ativan, a mid-brain sedative which is supposed to overcome my pippyup tendencies.

And, Hallelujah, can I hear you say once again,  Hallelujah, it did! That in combination with this horribly expensive drug, Zofran, I slept like a wrinkled-neck baby Thursday night.

My mid-brain was happy with itself. Content in a whirlpool of euphoria.

I would like to tell Dr. Kenneth Frank (the man just sentenced for raping two women after giving them Ativan so they couldn't resist his sexual attack), that there are beneficial uses of Ativan that won't land you in prison for 12 years.

I will be continuing with radiation for 39 sessions, ending Jan. 11 by my calculations.

Dr. Davis says the last three weeks will be lighter doses. (Might as well, you can fry beef shank only so much and it becomes too tough to chew).

Other good news is he told me on Dec. 4 that my tumor had shrunk by more than 75 percent. The next week, he felt my neck all over and said he was very pleased with the results.

That means we're going to kick this thing out. Hopefully for good. That makes me happy, in a squashing a pesky bug sort of way.