i have just had my third tongue excision for scc of the tongue. i had radiation 6weeks last summer. i was initially diagnosed march 2006. i was really very fortunate. i had pain and numbness in my tongue and lower lip for at least 6m before i saw the ent. he is a friend-i'm a nurse practitioner and his office is just below mine-i went down at lunch one day and said "look at this" he biopsied it the next day and did the excision 3days later. unfortunatly the margins weren't clear and he had to then remove a much larger piece of my tongue--i was able to return to work within 10days and worked through the summer getting radiation treatments at 7am. i took a lot of non narcotic pain relievers at work with copious amounts of viscous lidocaine. i got used to saying to my patients to excuse my speech--that i'd had a recent dental procedure and still had the effects of novacaine. but at 5pm i started morphine- it was the only thing which would help- to get me through the night. a few weeks after the radiation was over i quit the morphine because i was feeling so depressed and afraid and unable to cope with life. my outlook improved significantly when i got off the narcs. i had received so much prayer and encouragement--and had had a clean ct and pet...i thought i was healed! i even skipped several of my monthly check ups. After this latest excision--with a clean margin-i got by with percocet for less than a week. but the surgery was 5/31 and i can not get my spirits up. i only see this future filled with loss. and i have received notice that my org will no longer be using the nurse practitioner model for primary care and that my time (and therefore med insurance) is limited--
i am so grateful to have found this site. i have never even looked at on line support type places before.
you all sound so brave and knowledgable about your cancers and treatments. i will be seeing an oncologist this week for reeval and second opinion re options. i will be reading everything on this site. god bless all of you. i apologise for being such a whiner. at work i have to always seem on top of everything and all my attention is focused on the patients.
but on the inside i'm really weak! mary ann