To Helen, Lois and Buzz and jim,

Thank you so very much for your kind words and support.

I feel like I've tried everything. The only thing holding me togeteher right now is that my daughter is home on vacation from college and I don;'t want her to see her mom a basket case.

I've tried the miracle mouth wash everyone talks about. It helps for a few minutes and then gives me a rebound effect that's even worse! I've tried no drugs and can't function and work from the pain. I do go to a pain management Dr. who has me on morphine, fentanyl lolly pops, and lexapro for depression. I don't like driving or working on all this stuff.

My job has been really good with me. I work for a disability insurance company, so they sort of have to be good to me while I am on disability and they are. Right now I'm working part time every day adding a few more hours each week until I'm back to full time. I make mistakes at work because it's hard to concentrate with the drugs. I drive as little as possible. Because I've dealt with this for so many years, I can't just temporarily put things on hold until I get better. The fact is, i won't get better. The good news is that this is a slow moving cancer that won't kill me, because we watch it so very closely. The bad news is that the sores always hurt, and they are always there.

I wasn't handling things too badly until September. I had a surgery to remove some benign sores in order to alleviate some of the pain. I was ok with that. I heard benign sores and alleviate pain and I was all for it.

A week later, yes, I said a week later, after I had completely clean margins and the results all came back benign, I came up with a brand new sore in my mouth. ONE WEEK AFTER SURGERY!

Back to the Dr. who I figured would give me the usual, "let's just keep an eye on it" response.

He didn't like how it looked so he lasered it off as an out patient a few days later.

I've always found I have more pain from the little lazer surgeries than from the major cutting surgeries. True to form, I was miserable.

A few weeks went by and I was getting back to work,when I came down with a very bizarre reaction to an antibiotic and ended up in the hospital for almost a week.

It wasn't cancer this time,just some weird reaction, but the whole thing after 2 recent surgeries, just through me for a loop.

I have a therapist now that is trying to work with me and says I have post traumatic stress syndrome from this last weird experience in the hospital.

I am really fighting hard to get out from under the covers every day, get dressed, and make a day of it.

That's why I so desperately would like to meet some people who are going through something similar. I hope that they can help me and that I can eventually help them as well.

Thanks for listening.

If anyone knows of support groups of people with recurring cancers, please let me know. I live in N.Jersey, 30 seconds away from St Barnabas Hospital(a very fine hospital) but I still go all the way to Sloan Kettering in NYC just because I have a lot of trust in my Dr.

He wants me to get back to full time work right away. I may loose my job if I'm not up to it. I just can't work that many hours right now.

Enough of my woe's already. Thank you for listening.

Leslie