Watching your Skeleton Eat

Hey Pretzel King Fans! The latest medical news:

I went for a swallow test today with Barium. It was a weird experience. I sat in front of a screen while the Speech/Language Pathologist had meet eat or drink various things. Started with a slightly thick water. Did a thicker and then thicker liquid. Many swallows of each. All tasted weird. Then a small piece of a canned peach. Had to grind it down to a puree. The interesting part was watching the video playback of the whole thing. It looked like my skull from the side with glasses on the front. Then I watched as I drank and swallowed. I could see the esophagus, my trachea, and the epiglottis. I saw up close how some stuff went down the windpipe, but coughed it out. All in all, kinda cool, but I can’t recommend.

The therapist told me that the scan did not show any structural damage, just swelling that would go down in time. She believes continued therapy, and doing my exercises at home, I would eventually be able to function normally. Taste might take many more months. But for awhile, maybe permanently, I may have to drink from a straw and only take very small bites of soft foods.

They cancelled the second thing I was scheduled for- an esophogram. Said they knew I would choke on the things I had to eat.

I am scheduled to meet with my Speech Language person on the 9th, and every other Thursday in May.

So, what’s next, you are dying to ask?

I go for my PET scan- this is the one where we find ut if the cancer is gone-on May 20th. The next day I meet with ENT Oncologist, the the 23rd I meet with my GP and the Radiology Oncologist (and therapy). By coincidence, I am scheduled to serve on a federal grand jury that week and next. I am an alternate, and they know I have these appointments, so I’m not worried.

In Pretzel news: Stacey continues to work mad hours- over 100 last week. And we don’t pay her for much more than half. Our twin employees are still doing well. Ben’s still treats us like crap (being a top 3 franchise every month are far as increased revenue is apparently not important). We do NOT recommend being a franchise owner. We hear the other owners feel the same way.

We met with our attorney today (twice) to investigate what legal action we might take with the accountant who stole from us, and/or Square who gave out the loan with no due diligence and still insists we pay it back despite knowing it was taken fraudulently. After much discussion, it appears our best route is to take both of them to small claims court. Our attorney is 99.9% sure we wont get a penny, but at a cost of about $100 we’re going to give it a go anyway. The lawyer we saw normally charges $250 an hour, but even after about 5 hours over two meetings, he drafted the complaint and gave us tons of advice for $150. Again, worth the try.

Our BEST option by far is to seek a buyer for the store/franchise. The value should be much higher than we paid for it. If anybody knows somebody who loves pretzels…