I had a similar surgery and the first few days of the trach were indeed terrifying. It would clog up often (several times per hour in the first few days) and I would be really scared that I would choke before a nurse could come to suction it out. It was very difficult to try to do it by yourself, with the wrist wound and staples & gauze holding that together, an IV tube in the other arm along with the clip thingie that attached to the heart rate beeper, plus all the other junk attached to me (nasal feeding tube, bandages on my neck for the neck dissection area, catheter, the cardboard French fry container taped to my thigh where the skin graft to fix the wrist came from, etc), not to mention being extremely sore & physically and mentally tired from not being able to sleep because of the constant choking, and nurses coming in to take blood samples, check on me, etc. It was brutal and absolutely barbaric. But it saved my life.

In my case, I was in the hospital for 16 days, then finally sent home. I was "lucky" that I did not need chemo, so I can't comment on that part. I had to come back for radiation about 6 weeks post-surgery. By the time that happened, most of the stuff that was disturbed due to the surgery had healed significantly and I was able to eat almost normally again. During the healing process post surgery I had learned to eat some of the foods listed in threads in this forum and I had also supplemented with vegetable juices made with my juicer. The high calorie milkshakes were something I ate a lot of but I was pretty sick of a high fat, high dairy diet by the end of it all.