Dear Friends

I am writing to update you on Mum's progress. She had surgery on Friday, 24th January to remove the tumour at the base of her tongue. They also performed a radical neck dissection to remove the lymph nodes and an incision down through the bottom of her bottom lip and down through her chin. Her left arm is bandaged and up on a sling as this arm was used as a donor site for the skin graft.

It all looked pretty nasty to start with but today is only the second day since the surgery and she has made a bit of progress in that she has been moved out of Critical Care and into a side room on a ward, which is good news isn't it?

The Nurses have just started to feed her through the PEG via a drip thingy for the first time.

Mum looks pretty tired and fed up at the moment, but she's doing okay, Thank God.
She is finding it pretty frustrating not being able to talk yet due to a tracheostomy tube being in place. I have prepared a table of appropriate words and sentences for her to point to, which is helping a bit. Today she pointed to 'I AM SAD/DEPRESSED'. Apparently this is quite a normal feeling to have after such a long surgery.

They have tried to get her to sip tiny amount of water, but she is struggling to swallow at the moment. I expect everything inside is still swollen. Tomorrow the speech therapist is going to come and 'teach' her to swallow.

As a family we are holding it together pretty well considering it is one big emotional rollercoaster ride. It has hit my dad the hardest, I have never seen my dad get so tearful before.

Well I guess that's all my news for now. I will keep you posted.

Prayers and Best Wishes for you all.

Love

Kathleen.