Getting a tongue flap

Hi,

I had very similar operation Nov 2017(see my profile). Mine was more extensive and involved floor of mouth. The operation itself though long did not seem too bad to recover from and I was eating in a fashion within a month. Don't worry about pain, they make sure you are always comfortable. You may have a trachestomy for a week because of swelling. Because mine had spread to a lymph node I had radiotherapy & that took longer to recover from. The wound on my arm probably took about 4 weeks before I could wear any clothes on it. The skin graft was very delicate for quite a while and easily damaged. 17 months post op I can now where a watch on it and it is more robust. The flap in my mouth shrank considerably after radiotherapy. I have no feeling in it don't feel if I bite it. 

My speech has been affected & I do struggle with some words and sounds but am totally intelligible. But you may be ok. Can I recommend looking up Robert hasse cancer on internet "not what you had planned" he had your op but with radiotherapy. He is a motivational speaker. He has done quite a few you tube videos & you will be able to see how ckear his speech is. 

Happy Easter & good luck with the op. If you want to send me a friend request I'm happy to help

Hi

i didn’t really experience much pain after the op at all. The most uncomfortable thing was the nose feeding as what ever I was being fed made me feel very bloated. Different nurses kept adjust the flow rate. In the end I “accidentally” coughed up the tube and didn’t have to have it put back in. 

The arm arm was exposed when I left hospital after about 10 days. 

I do have pics of it if you want to see. I’m almost 5 years out.m and it’s healed brilliantly. 

Thanks  I did appreciate you reply. Hopefully next week the BBC are going to follow me to highlight awareness of oral surgery. I wanted to turn this negative demon into something positive. Will look at Robert's link. Happy Easter to you to. Will add you as a friend if I can figure out how to.

Hi, I've sent you a friend request, accept it and we can msg each other.

Hi Saturnal , im pleased you are getting good advice, I'm afraid I do not know enough about this cancer to comment, if you want to become friends with the two other guys just click on their name at the top of the post and it should come up "friends request " Wishing you all the best in this cancer journey, its doable but not a walk in the park as my consultant used to say, he was right and after 3 attempts i made it and now live a near normal life . Good luck.

                                                                                              Chris x

Hi Saturnal - your post reminded me of how I felt just before my op in Sept 2015 - eating getting very painful and having to limit my diet to things that didn't hurt when you chewed and swallowed them. Like you, I wanted things to get better and was apprehensive of the big op to do that.

You can see from my profile what happened for me - main memories are first few days after the op are a blur as you come round from the op and are kept comfortable - gradually you're brought back to reality - but I experienced no pain in that process.  

I worried about the trachy, but wasn't worried by the feeding tube up nose. However nurses were great and made trachy work - and medics were very keen to move me off it as soon as was suitable.

Arm bandage came off on day 10 (as predicted by consultant) I thought this would be very painful but the graft (from tummy to arm) had taken well and was healing nicely. No real pain, just treated it with respect for a while until it started to look more robust.

Do ask your consultant about what to expect in the 2 weeks post op - mine gave me some very good expectation setting advice which proved so true and reassuring that I was following a well traveled path.

The other advice I'd give is don't over anticipate what's about to happen. It's a process, the NHS have done it lots of times before, they know the things to watch out for and how to deal with them. Sure, challenge them to explain stuff, but I found most times they did and that the path I was guided along was the right one.

Take care, I'm sure you will be looked after.

Alastair.