Well, here's to my first post <cracks knuckles> My name is Kevin, it's nice to have a name to the Person, rather than remembering a person simply by type an severity of their ailment.

I am 5.5 years cancer free and I am going to just type out my story, it's interesting (and bloooody long) and I like telling it to people, I hope you can see something in it that helps you.

Everything was normal in my life until -
Back in late 2000 I noticed that I couldn't whistle as well as I thought I could. I didn't think anything of it except that it persisted. I looked in a mirror one day and realized my lips weren't puckering in a circle.. and i noticed my eyebrows weren't raising to the same height. I thought this odd so I went to see a Neurologist and an ENT. Being something wierd with my head, i was keen to find out what it was. Neither doctor was able to explain why this was happening and offereed the idea of a mini stroke or Bells Palsey. For those who don't know. Bells Palsy is a prognosis based on lack of evidence of other things causing paralysis of the face. OK, fine, maybe a mini stroke happens at night when you're deeply asleep. The ENT ordered a CT Scan and an MRI and it came up empty.

A couple of months later after hearing the results were clear, i set aside my worries and felt things would spring back. They didn't. After 2 months it was worse.. down to about 60% functionality on my smile, eyebrow, wiggling my nose, anything. This was unnerving so I went again to an ENT and Neurologist. The neurologist told me it's definately not neurological.. go away. ENT told me that they can't see anything but offered to do exploratory surgery to see what was going on inside. I didn't feel too keen on the idea of getting my face cut up just for someone to take a peek inside.. if scans don't catch it, then it's probably nothing. I went away again, with no results but only deeper concerns and worries.

At this point I went to a 3rd ENT, it's been 6 or 7 months since my first whistle and this time, the ENT *knew* there was something amiss, she wasn't going to let anything stop her from figuring out what was happening. I admired her for that. She went through everything she could think of, including getting advice from Toronto doctors, testing me for lymes disease, lots of things.. this whole 'Bells Palsy' thing came back into question but I had taken no hits on the head and had not had any strokes that i was aware of. the 3rd ENT gave up reluctantly, told me to go to a larger centre in Halifax, NS (Canada). By this point, my face stopped working on the left hand side completely yet I had all sensations there.

The doctors there did a CT scan and an MRI (at this time the 3rd of each i've had) and sat around in a group looking it over. They decided that since my face was not working yet I had my balance and sense of taste, they deduced that my nerve damage had to be from a certain point, and forward. So whatever happened to my face, was going to be rectified by taking the nerve out of my pinky toe (remarkably similar nerve structure to your 7th nerve in the face) and patching my facial nerve with it.

This was a straightforward 4 hour surgery with great odds of success. I said my farewell's to my pinky, but by this time, I was willing to sacrifice quite a lot to get my smile back.

Through everything until now, i had been hurt most at the loss of my smile. I got married Sept 2000 and I couldn't smile for my wedding pictures, the 2nd most important day of my life, (the first being the birth of my currently 2.5 yr old daughter). Being new to this, I felt as if I looked like a monster, or at the very least a smart a## in all my pictures. I have never gotten used to my half/face smile to this day although my friends say they can't remember me without it now. I'll never forget.

Well, my mother and wife attended the surgery and waited for 4 hours.. 5.. 6. They started asking questions, 'Where is he?' 'Is he ok???'. This part would have killed me had I been them, I commend their strength of character and love because when I woke up, i never could have guessed what they went through. At the 10hour mark they were told to go back to the Hotel and they were called at the 14 hour mark to say I was out of surgery.

My recollection is waking up, throwing up, passing out.. until I woke up the following day with the doctor standing in front of my bed to tell me, 'Kevin I have some bad news for you'.

He told me that when they opened me up, my nerve was about 10 times its original size.. they traced it back to the Parotid gland (biggest spit producing gland) and realized that it had a 1.5 centimeter tumor in it. The tumor used the gland as a shell so on scans, it looked like any other flesh and did not show up. Meanwhile, this aggressive cancer I had decided to travel through my facial nerve and as it grew, my facial impulses deadened.

The doctors stripped out every piece of 7th nerve they could find through surgery, and microsurgery, that required the exposure of my entire neck and cheek. The biopsies on the extracted nerve took 15 minutes apiece to determine if they had cancer so after chasing every branch down and testing it, they finally feel they got ahead of the growth. Funny but two things strike me as worrisome, as i read between the lines of what I was told. 1. this cancer is very aggressive, it can travel in the nerve and it can skip places to infect later down the nerve line. 2. they never cut the nerve shorter than about 1" from the skull due to what i believe is policy. Just makes me wonder at times.

As you can probably imagine, there's a helluva scar there. I tell kids I got in a fight with a shark or an alligator, depending on the locale i'm in at the time. hehehe they *always* believe me.. it's great!

Having the cancer removed meant going through the radiation theraby, on two separate angles so as to not fry my frizzled brain cells. I ended up having my tongue burned to the point where the tastebuds were burned off, and the neck blistered. I didn't have TOOO much pain, definately *could* eat, but I doubt you would be surprised if I said that eating lost its appeal to me in a Big way. Nothing tasted like food, nothing was desirable and i am a food addict. (only way about 200 lbs at 5'11.. but by all rights i should prob be 275!!).

About the end of my therapy (not the end of the effects of the therapy) I discovered that raw vegetables were the easiest to find the desire to eat. I found they didn't rely so much on sweet/sour/salt/bitter like your tongue is trained for and I found them tolerable. Suddenly i was a vegan! I have to say that the healing was messy on my neck but OK on my face. I've also never been able to use the left hand side of my face again, well, until another operation, kind of, but that's another long story.

I'm very much happy and alive today. You'll never hear me say i'm a cancer survivor because I'm not. I'm Kevin, love my frisbee and computer, and my wife and daughter without reservation.

I have the same fears and worries as many people, but I think i have the strength of character to see this as another dip in the road, not a life and death battle. By my calculations, if the cancer started my whistling problem, then that tumor was in my head for a year before anyone knew what it was.

I don't think i'm lucky or unlucky, i'm not a victim, God doesn't hate me, i've never smoked, rarely drink and stay on the good side of everyone i meet. Some people say I don't deserve this, I say, Better me than someone who may not have the strength to fight the battle.

If you've read this far BRAVO! This is my first novel in my new series.. I'm kidding.. it's not a novel, just long enough to be considered one. Thanks for reading this far, really. I hope you find inspiration in my words.