HAs anyone any experience of this surgery? If so can they tell me what the recovery period was?
Surgeon has said he would do a prosthetic rehabilitation with an obturator immediately and would screw this in as a temporary measure. HAs anyone any experience of this? If so did they have any problems? How soon were they able to eat? Did they have any difficulty talking? What was the pain like?
Anything else that would help to decide on whether to accept surgical option.
hi tez,
i've learned here that things go quite differently for different individuals, so please keep that in mind as you read the replies here and as you make decisions.
having said that, my sister had a surgery similar to what you're describing, also on the left side. her experience might be among the more difficult ones. she was in the hospital for 8 days post-surgery, and it took her about 10 days' recovery at home. she had to get a PEG tube within a couple of weeks after that because she was not able to eat sufficiently through her mouth.
she had an obturator almost immediately after the surgery but wasn't able to use it regularly because of soarness and pain in her mouth. when she was using it though, her voice was a bit rougher and her speaking a bit slower, but we were told and i have seen it in other people that these problems would get better over time.
in her case, she had to follow up with radiation within about 8 weeks after the surgery, and that added to the soarness and thus her difficulty in using the obturator. because of a speedy recurrence and having to go immediately into chemo, she's still using the PEG tube (6 months) and can't use the obturator at all these days. probably some muscle atrophy has happened in the process.
again, please keep in mind that there are others who've had different experiences. even though there are some common patterns, reconstruction, rehabilitation and recovery are all individual processes and affected by many factors.
as i understand it, currently the widely accepted wisdom is to start the treatment with chemo and radiation even when a surgery is in the plan (again, this may not apply to some cases). the reason for this is partly to shrink the size of tumor to reduce the extent of surgery, but also to reach right away to areas where the surgery cannot get to either because they increase the risk or because they are too small yet to show and be picked up in scans.
i just read an article about ineffectiveness of surgery in certain types of oral cancer. i'll send you the URL privately.
be well.
gita