Hey Rachel,

Glad to hear you are home and the operation went well. It took about 9 months for the swelling in my face to go down completely, but it eventually did. I am now looking forward to some reconstructive surgery this year.

I'm not sure by now if you know whether you'll need radiation, but I'd recommend you eat as much as you can before the radiation starts. This is mainly because you may lose your taste buds and/or the inside of your mouth feels like its very sunburnt making it difficult to eat. I would highly recommend getting 'Sustagen - hospital strength' from the chemist as it is great stuff with loads of protein (which you probably know helps with healing). I still have 3 scoops daily in my banana smoothie.

As far as oral hygiene goes, the nurses gave me a home-made recipe for mouthwash: half teaspon baking soda/bicarbonate, quarter of a teaspoon of sea salt in a glass of warm water (pre-boiled if your newly out of surgery). You can add mint leaves to help the taste. Also, Colgate have just released a mouthwash for dry mouth sufferers (I have extensive dry-mouth due to 2 x radiation on both sides of my mouth) and the mouthwash also has extra fluoride... which you need more of if you have dry mouth because you no longer have saliva to help protect your teeth.

Also, when I started cleaning my remaining teeth after surgery I started using cotton-tips/ear buds then progressed to a childs soft toothbrush until eventually I could clean them as normal.

Oh, and I used to make up my favourite stew as normal and then put it in the blender... it didn't look good, but it tasted awesome!!

That's probably enough from me at the moment... I hope you continue to heal well and I hope that I've been of some help.

Take care,
Margie