It's pretty important to maintain the ability to swallow (or we 'forget' how to do it), so it's really good that he will be seeing a speech pathologist -- It takes a lot of time to adjust to our new boundaries, and suffering from that goldurned radiation is not a picnic -- I certainly wouldn't want to go through that again!

The PEG is really not much of a problem once one gets used to it (except cleaning up the 'food' spills.

Your job is to give him a lot of moral support and human contact, and see that he can get enough rest when he needs it -- It's an unseen enemy that he is fighting right now, so expect that he may occasionally let some of that wrongly spill over on you.

Keep coming back here and asking questions; pretty soon you will be answering the questions of others.


Age 67 1/2
Ventral Tongue SCC T2N0M0G1 10/05
Anterior Tongue SCC T2N0M0G2 6/08
Base of Tongue SCC T2N0M0G2 12/08
Three partial glossectomy (10/05,11/05,6/08), PEG, 37 XRT 66.6 Gy 1/06
Neck dissection, trach, PEG & forearm free flap (6/08)
Total glossectomy, trach, PEG & thigh free flap (12/08)
On August 21, 2010 at 9:20 am, Pete went off to play with the ratties in the sky.