Life After Cancer
I titled this “Life After Cancer”, but it is very early days, and it is still on my mind.
I do feel a lot better even though still very much wheelchair bound, I can just about hobble to and from the toilet, and down the stairs, if need be, going up is still bloody painful as my legs still look like two very thin twigs.
My main problem is the mouth and throat, I still have no saliva or taste bud, which mean I can’t really eat anything, trying to chew on cardboard is far from fun, as all food still tastes like this, I keep trying as advised, but to be fare it may take up to 2 years to come back, and even then, I may not get all flavours back. It does cause me quite a bit of pain, try not eating since I left Clatterbridge blummin months ago, it is very depressing. I keep seeing things that I would normally love, KFC or a good restaurants Steak Meal are top of the list, followed by a Burger, but at the moment and for the next 6 months + (depending on my saliva glands coming back to life), all food is basically out, Bread is totally impossible, a big mistake by me is trying to eat Bread or Pastry, it instantly sticks to the top of my mouth and turns into concrete, and I have to scrape it out with a spoon or something similar, even Yogurts are a complete failure, one you don’t taste anything, and then each mouthful you try just seems to have all the liquid sucked out of it and it becomes a very disgusting thick paste. I can just about handle rice if it is over cooked, I can just about eat a small amount of savoury rice, but after about the 4th or 5th mouthful it starts to become a challenge, and the odd bit of rice sticking to the very dry mouth is not fun to try and get out.
So, Food and Drink is basically a bloody nightmare.
The other big issue is the Phlegm! It is always at the back of the throat, but after sleeping it seems to move into the mouth and the dry up, come morning and it is literally hanging off the top of my mouth, and it is a pig to get rid of, and if not sorted early on it makes me throw up which is very painful, thankfully this seems now to only happen every few weeks, but as I do not have anything in my stomach what does come up is not nice, and far from fun.
Why am I mentioning this, basically because I want others to know what will happen if they are also suffering from the same sort of Cancer.
I hate the way that I am, everything hurts because I have lost most of any muscles that I ever had, but the whole mouth thing, and the fairly good chance that it will come back makes me honestly say that I would not have gone through with this treatment if I knew then what I know now.

The pain was with me well after the abscess was gone, it left me with being sick if I moved, sometimes a couple of times a day, but this also gave me pain, these times were not fun.
I was told that you won’t feel a thing before the Peg was put into me, normally it should be a lot less grief than I suffered, just make sure that the doctor doing the job is not a trainee, mine I do not think was, but it was basically bodged, and the pain and the months of grief was not at all fun.
Now many months later it is nearly pain free, I cannot sleep on my stomach as that is painful, and the tube gets caught in everything, and that can be painful as well, but thankfully not for long, I remember being not happy about having the Peg fitted, especially as no one explained just how bad the Radiotherapy would be, but I am grateful, but I am still not happy with having to be Peg fed, but understand that it is keeping me alive.
I would not have gone through with it. 100%.