Hi Ange,

I had my subtotal glossectomy done at VGH in Vancouver. The surgery included removal of a substantial part of my tongue, a flap from my wrist, skin graft from the thigh (to fill the hole left from removing the flesh from the wrist) & partial neck dissection. I had the tracheostomy and the nasal feeding tube. The trach sucks big time, but you'll get through it. Check my first post out for the whole story if you want more detail.

Everyone is a little bit different because their sites are in different locations, shapes & sizes, so what you go through will be unlikely to be exactly the same as what I or anyone else went through.

In my case, I was in the hospital for about 16 days. I was able to eat without supplements from the NG tube after about two weeks. Another couple of weeks at home and I was starting to be able to eat most everything again. Six weeks after the surgery, they began radiation treatments & eventually I had to go back on the (mostly) liquid diet for awhile. Then it improved again. Didn't take me long to get back on my feet, back in a dragonboat and hiking. I even did the West Coast Trail about seven months post surgery.

My speech is somewhat affected. Problems are most noticeable in my case when I need to spell out letters (e.g. my D's sound like G's), or when I need to say words with double letters. I can eat almost everything again, although sometimes I have trouble with things like sushi - I need to bite it in half now. I have a nice scar on my wrist, but everyone says chicks dig scars. I feel pretty fortunate if those are the worst things I have to worry about now.