Getting worse is getting better..

Now that the surgery is over it's time to think about other things.

The first is recovery from the surgeon's knife. The infection that developed in my neck has cleared up and there is almost nothing left of what was a large hole. It seems safe now to record my fears of MRSA, septicemia and other hospital acquired infections. Those worries at least, are a thing of the past. The surgery has left me now with two areas of discomfort. The worst is my right hand. A circle of flesh was removed from my inside my wrist to patch into my cheek. Half the back of my hand and the back of my thumb are now superficially numb but beneath that are a constant tingling, pins and needles and coldness. It hasn't stopped me using my hand and at times I'm hardly aware of it. On other occasions the hand doesn't even feel as though it's a part of me. Fortunately I have normal feeling in the all my fingers and the front of my thumb. Everything moves and flexes almost normally so I can do most things and hopefully as swelling and bruising to nerves wears off, my hand will feel more normal again.
The second area is my mouth. I suppose it was inevitable that this was going to feel badly mauled. Not long after the surgery my mouth felt as though it had been kicked by a horse. Now that more feeling is coming back there is an almost permanent tingling in my left cheek and lip. Not as uncomfortable as my wrist but not a normal or natural feeling. I'm also more aware of how the shape of the inside of my mouth has changed and that's a bit unnerving! In a way I've only got half a working mouth. It's almost good enough, my speech is somewhat compromised, in particular it's difficult to roll my r's. Eating is difficult but getting easier. Things like cake and bread are the hardest as they get sticky in the mouth and hard to move around. As long as mouthfuls are small I can move lumps and chew quite easily but I do bite my tongue more often that I like. Again, it's hard to tell whether this will improve and get easier or whether I'll just have to learn to live with it. I may end up having another tooth removed as I can no longer use my left canines and these are the ones that catch my tongue. At least I'm on a solid diet and we're having to puree less and less. I've been out twice now for curries and had both Chinese and Thai takeaways - that's a lot better than being attached to a drip for twenty hours a day in order to avoid malnutrition.

Looming in the future is the radio-therapy. Having just got back to some degree of normality the Dalek is likely to send me back to 'Go' again. Effectively the ray gun just burns tissue and cancer cells. Very slowly and gently but the cumulative effect will be to burn and scar my mouth just as I'm beginning to use it properly again. There may be more scarring, there may be ulceration and swallowing could become more difficult. Of course, this could be the worst case scenario and I could 'breeze' through the treatment with only mild discomfort - I hope so!! Having met the Dalek nearly two weeks ago, I'm just waiting to hear from the hospital as to when treatment may begin. Radio-therapy is a kind of non-guaranteed insurance that hopes to get rid of any rogue cancer cells that made a dash for freedom before they were cut out by the surgeon. The daft thing is that no-one can tell whether there are any just camping out any waiting to multiply madly. If there are, no-one knows how many there are or where they are. So Dalek zapping is a bit of a shot in the dark and there's no-way of telling whether it's necessary or not. The natural consequence of this is that there is no way of telling whether the zapping has been effective or even done any good at all. I just have to wait and see whether anything else develops in the future. At least, that's what the mainstream docs seem to be telling us.
Once again, to get a different view you have to go outside the National Health so the next exciting entry will tell you about our visit to Bath.