Well, if the doctors and surgeons did their job properly, you don't have cancer anymore!
I had stage 3 cancer, with a fairly large tumor in my tongue. They performed a partial glossectomy, neck dissection and even zapped me with some radiation for good measure, because they weren't entirely happy with the margins of the surgery I guess. It was a pretty scary experience including a 10-ish hour surgery, 16 day hospital stay followed by four months off of work recovering physically and mentally from the surgery and radiation. However, my attitude was that these medical professionals know a lot more about the situation than I do, so I might as well trust their opinions and let them do their jobs & fix me up. That doesn't mean that I wasn't scared. I was, and it really sucked. Cancer took my mother, a close uncle, and now it was trying to take me too. I just realized that there wasn't much I could do about it directly, so I might as well try not to fret too much and let the professionals take care of me.
Since then, life has returned largely to normal. I do have some minor speech difficulties & have to be a bit more careful chewing food into smaller bites now since my tongue does not work as well as it did before this whole mess. I have some numbness in my neck where they yanked out some lymph nodes, a 7 cm by 6 cm elliptical scar on my wrist where they removed some tissue to reconstruct the tongue, a large rectangular scar on my thigh where they took more skin to fill in the hole in my wrist, and a tiny little black dot tattooed on my chest where they lined up the plastic mask that strapped me down to a table while radiating me. But I also have returned to competitive dragon boating & have travelled as far as the Philippines for a race. Heading to Korea for another one next week. I've paddled in a 28km outrigger canoe race in Hawaii, hiked the west coast trail on Vancouver Island, and feel as though I'm physically stronger than I had ever been in my life at this point.
What will I do if it comes back? I'll fight it again.
Last edited by Vanpaddler; 08-23-2017 08:40 AM.
