An introduction

Hi, I'm relatively new to the site, so thought I would introduce myself. I am 27 years old, and was first diagnosed with mouth cancer the week before my 21st birthday. I have none of the usual risk factors; I don't smoke, drink in moderation, and every doctor I have ever seen likes to tell me that I am the polar opposite of their usual patients (who are apparently male, heavy smokers and over 60!). Not that this makes me feel any better. I had an operation in the summer of 2003 to remove the small tumor at the back of my mouth. Then, I got on with my life, I qualified as Biology teacher, and by the autumn of 2008 was looking forward to being able to say that I had gone 5 years being cancer free. Then i found a small tender spot at the back of my mouth. I went to see my dentist, as I was sure it was just a wisdom tooth coming through. He reassure me that although it wasn't a wisdom tooth, it just looked a little sore, like I had knocked it with my toothbrush a few few times, but because of my history, he would send me off to hospital for an MRI and refer me to a local consultant ( my previous consultant was 200 miles away because I had started seeing him whilst at Uni). So in November i went for the MRI, and the result came back that I had a small lump under the skin, sitting right on my jaw bone at the back of my mouth. The week before xmas I went in for a biopsy (xmas dinner this year for me involved lot of gravy to soften up my food!), they confirmed that the cancer was back, but that luckily it was still low grade and slow growing. Because it was a recurrence, they decided to tackle it as aggressively as possible, so on 29th January, I underwent a 13 hour surgery, where the removed lots of tissue from the back of my mouth, took out some of my jaw bone, and then constructed a 'flap' from my left fore arm to fill in the gap at the back of my mouth. Then they had to take a skin graft from my stomach to cover the hole in my arm! They put in a tracheostomy which was in for about 4 days, and i had to be fed by a PEG tube for a month. So 6 months on, and apart from the fact that my jaw is still a bit tender, and I am left with huge scars on my neck and arm, I am trying to get on with my life. It is nice to find a place like this to share my story Miss P