Friday, June 17, 2005

Day 28 - I do not have cancer

I want to share an early morning post with you I have woke up on the 4 week anniversary of my diagnosis and have 2 things I want I want to share with you:

I would sit in front of you today and say I do not have cancer. I have no ill feelings, no side effects, no pain from it. I honestly believe that I do not have cancer, how scary is that, when I know I do I have seen the lump and tonsil results.

Denial or what, I know I have 2 stages in the cycle to go through grief and denial but thinking I do not have cancer is that a positive or a negative?

The 2nd is this posting sent back from a contributor to www.mouthcancerfoundation.org
or cut and paste this link http://rdoc.org.uk/eve/ubb.x/a/frm/f/75510549

I will share it with you as it highlights the horrors I have to face real soon.

I know its early but FUCK! Sorry about that.

Hi Nigel. Good luck with the Radiotherapy and prepare yourself mentally for the road ahead as radiotherapy can be quite painful and the associated effects very uncomfortable. Have you been told you will need a stomach peg? If you do then it is essential that your nutritional intake is cosistent otherwise the weight falls off and you get pretty weak. if your throat really begins to hurt then i found the best thing to use was cocaine mouthwash but limit the use of it as it cannot be prescribed too often. I had a six week course of radiotherapy directed at three points on my neck and throat so i was pretty burnt up at the end of it. with my treatment i did'nt start to feel the effect untill roughly two weeks in....and then i had to liquid feed for some months after. i don't know how much radiotherapy has been planned for you but if its aimed at more than one location then give yourself plenty of recovery time as it takes some getting used to and you may be left with a dry mouth as a result. fatigue is also a side effect of intense radiotherapy and can slow you down for months.The whole thing absolutely knackered me.My consultant played down the Radiotherapy and almost treated the event as nothing more than routine but I found it very tough and i wish i had known a little more about it beforehand as in all fairness, a consultant would rarely know exactly how it feels to be zapped with radiotherapy and how it leaves you feeling.
Two and a half years on and i'm pretty much over it all now, though still a little mentally scarred and the dry mouth thing is a permanent irritant. But...i'm still walking the planet and thats something to be grateful for.
Talk to various patients on the site about their own experiences with treatment and how they coped as people cope differently though there is no escaping the discomfort. I hope that what you need to have done does not prove too distressing for you and that you get through it with as little pain as possible.
Its not something that many people will experience and my message to your family is to be close to hand in those first few months when you are likely to feel at your lowest and to give you plenty of emotinal support and to make sure that you eat enough...albiet that it may have to be liquidised. you've had the surgery to chop the bad bits out and now the radiotherapy will kill off any other dodgy cells that are left lurking.
Be strong and keep us posted.

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