Celebration! Why?

Making it to Fifty is no big deal I hear you say. Folk do it all the time!

But trust me when I tell you- for me,it has indeed been a fair way to 50
and in the past 5 years much of the journey has been about trying to negotiate
out of the ROUGH.

And I am not talking about a bit of longish fescue here.

I'm talking serious tussock and thick gorse!


How rough?

In February 2007 I was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma in my right tonsil with possible spread into the wall of my throat. After a selective neck dissection (this involves stripping the lymph from tissue in the neck to varying degrees depending on how far they think the cancer is likely to have spread- in my case I had 3 levels out of a possible 5 stripped ) the lymph was found to be clear. However a couple of cancer cells were found in the scoop of tissue taken from the throat wall- a miniscule amount but not in the optimal place according to the radiation oncologist.
His recommendation was to radiate the area. Reading up on the short and long-term effects of radiation made this a very unattractive proposition to me with my background in alternative medicine. I made the decision to do all I could with herbs, diet,meditation,qigong and anything else that suggested itself to me to try and heal myself.

By the beginning of 2008 I was feeling strong and recovering well from the invasive surgery and making plans to travel, even booked the tickets. I was envisioning a year of new adventures and vibrant health. I had started a new teaching job in a private language school as well as working with some individual learners in the evenings. I was feeling quietly optimistic about life. But I had a nagging discomfort in my right ear- not pain exactly but annoyingly present.I thought I better mention it at my next monthly check-up.


And then the ball was lost!

At my appointment on a Thursday in February 2008 I mentioned the ear pain and the registrar, on putting the little camera up my nose and down into my throat for a look immediately called the specialist. The camera goes back up my nose ."It looks as if it is back" says the surgeon....."Cancel everything for next week we will do a biopsy on Monday morning"

And so the story goes. It is a long one........................The cancer was back and had spread into my soft palate.

The treatment for this type of cancer is draconian. In brief it involves:

• making an incision from the bottom lip to the base of the ear
• sawing through the jawbone
• opening up the face so they can get into the throat
• removal of large portion of the throat wall and soft palate and possibly some of the tongue
• plastic surgeon removes a flap of skin from the inner arm along with the artery and plugs this into the hole left behind in the throat.
• Skin from the leg is taken to fill the gap left on the arm.
• I will have a tracheotomy tube to breathe through and a nasal-gastric tube to feed through
• I will not be able to speak at first
• most of my teeth will have to be removed prior to surgery
• 6 weeks after surgery the radiation and chemotherapy will begin
• the operation will take about ten hours

And that is if all goes well!

It didn't.

The flap failed to take due to some medical misadventure and  slowly died in my throat.
The whole procedure had to be repeated .
The newly healed incisions were re-opened.
Another flap of skin was taken from the other arm and more skin from the thigh to fill the gap.
This time I am on the operating table for about twelve hours.
Lots of blood is lost.
I need a blood transfusion but this does not happen for several days.
This is a very difficult  surgery to go through and having done it once does not make it easier to do a second time.
I am the plastic surgeons first failed flap!
Oh special me!
I am lost in a world of pain,drug haze and sheer endurance.
There is nothing left in me for this fight. Without my loving support team I simply would have perished.


Tough though all of this was I will look back on it as the easier part after having gone through the radiation/combined chemotherapy and the suicidal depression that followed.
There was a year of living with a stomach peg through which a foul-smelling liquid food was pumped into me all through the night.
And a three year period to wean myself off all the drugs I was prescribed to cope with my physical, 
mental and emotional issues post-treatment.

Of course this is just a very brief over-view of the past five years of my life.I always meant to write a book about this journey and tried to keep a journal throughout the treatment period .But somehow every time
 I sat down to write something the memories were still too raw and vivid. 

Default setting post radiation  treatment.

                                             









                                         



As one of my excellent brothers observed in his birthday card to me: "Bet there were days a few years ago when you thought you wouldn't make the half century". 

Indeedy! and that is why I say it has been a fair way to 50.

Making light after 3 weeks of radiation.