Hi, Danielle. So glad that the doctors are positive about your boyfriend's prospects. By my reckoning he is only up to Day 6 or so after a very long surgery. I've had two similar surgeries. On both occasions I was in a pretty terrible state of mind for the first 8 days. One of my surgeons told me that Day 8 is the first day to expect a real improvement. Surely the NG tube to peg transition can wait a bit and then he only has the trache to worry about. If you can talk him into having that changed, he will find life much easier.

You can tell him that on Day 6 or 7 of my first tongue op I hallucinated during the night, thought the hospital was under attack, pulled out my NG tube and whatever I was attached to and ran out of the hospital down some fire escape stairs. I had the trache in! Once I was out in the cool night air I realised that I had probably been mistaken and found my way back to the ward. Don't know how I did it because even now I get lost going from one building to another. I thought I had gone out of my mind and insisted on seeing a psychiatrist. Because I couldn't talk it was all very difficult but after that the rate of improvement was speedy. I didn't really cheer up until I left the hospital though.

If the hospital could put you in contact with another youngish man who has gone through the same thing, that might help. For all the love you and his mum are giving him, you can't show him what it looks like a year or so down the track.

I feel for you all. It's a horrible cancer and it's awful being "medicalised" and jabbed and anesthetized and cut. But if the cancer is removed, the body recovers and so does the mind in time.

Best wishes
Maureen