Leah,

Just thinking of you and wondering how your Mom is doing? Is she still scheduled for surgery on the 19th? If it is any consolation, my selective neck dissection was no problem at all. The removal of 1/3 of the tongue was not much fun. I had problems swallowing liquids at first and had to thicken everything up. Liquids went down faster than I could handle, and I had to "teach" myself how to swallow them again. Is she going to have grafting of tissue onto the tongue? I did, and my tongue seemed about 5x too big for my mouth for the first few days.

It is 7 weeks post-surgery now, and I am eating and drinking almost anything I want although it takes me a lot longer. I was even able to eat some roast the other night, and chips for the first time this past week. The hardest part is manipulating food around with my tongue.

Hang in there. You have a lot of people thinking about you and your Mom.

Jennifer