Well, what can I say? My mum has been suffering with a very painful mouth for at least 8 weeks now. Initially she had very bad mucositis which was cleared in 48 hours after some of my friends on here suggested asking for Gelclair. The mucositis cleared up but her top gum had become inflamed and because of her dentures rubbing she was in severe pain. After 6 visits to the dentist and a week in Spain which was spoiled by her very painful mouth, her dentist referred her to the maxillo facial consultant at the hospital.
Today we went to the appointment and were told that mum has a couple of skin flaps on her top gum caused by ill-fitting dentures worn over a period of time! Other than that her oral health is fine. The consultant says what he'll do is a minor op, which will take around 15 mins under local anaesthetic, to remove the skin flaps. She will then have to let her mouth heal for about 2 months before she can get new dentures made. I was told to phone at 1pm today to get her appointment for the procedure. Well I rung and the appointment is on October 11th!
I explained to the woman giving mum the appointment that mum has terminal cancer but that she's NED at the moment and so we would come at a moments notice in order to get this sorted out quickly so that she can enjoy some pain free, quality time. I asked if there was any chance of a cancellation and she told me not to worry as mum didn't have anything sinister as the consultant had said it was a non-urgent procedure, so there was no rush. Now all of us on here know what may be non-urgent to a healthy person can be very urgent in terms of the quality of life a terminal cancer patient has whilst they're still with us.
I'm not meaning to be pessimistic it's just that we don't know when mums cancer will come back, the only thing we do know for sure is it will come back. She has gone through all her treatment and should now be able to enjoy some quality time where she feels well in herself. The pain in her mouth is stopping her from doing this. Trying to get the woman to understand that proved difficult (impossible actually) but she said she would put mums name on the list for a cancellation. So I'll give her a week and then ring her again to remind (plague) her.
The way things stand at the moment our hope to go back to Spain at October half term looks unlikely. It would be at least midway through December before she could start to have a new denture made and seemingly that process is around 6 weeks. Mum is understandably down. Her legs have also been extremely weak today but I'm not sure if that's just that she's walked a bit more today or even the nervousness that she felt going to see the consultant. Hopefully, she'll pick up again tomorrow. I'm feeling a bit low today to be honest, it just doesn't seem fair!
