New Cancer Diagnosis

Hello, 

I had a tonsillectomy and mucosectomy operation prior to my neck dissection operation. As the tonsillectomy and mucosectomy was the same operation, I can only really comment on what they felt like. 

There was a fair amount of pain and difficulty with swallowing food after around day 3-4 post operation. I had difflam spray which helped and I also took dissolvable cocodamol 500mg/codeine 30mg which helped.

Unfortunately I pushed myself too fast too soon and tried to eat normal food and I choked, resulting in a haemorrhage and readmission to hospital for a nights observations. So, I would advise small bites, soft food, plenty of painkillers and around day 7-10 you should start to feel better

Chris 

Thanks  for  your reply

I know exactly  what you  mean  , I pushed myself  to eat normal food a bit too quickly because  the Advice  is  to do this to help get slough off etc but  I   am going  to  definitely  stick to more of a sift Diet initially  , how soon were you able to drink abd eat 

I was able to drink and eat straight away. My consultant encouraged it as she wanted the wound area to have food hitting it to help it heal apparently. The hospital kept me on relatively soft food for a day and sent me home 

Hi.  Have a look at my profile for similarities with you.  I have never found any operation on my tounge more painful than a tonsillectomy.  It is not unusal (but not common) for head and neck cancers to "Cancer of Unknown Primary" - CUP.  It is worrying not knowing the definative answer, but treatment will be designed to take care of the unkown part.

One of the issues is that the tumours can be very small in the early stages, but may well have been caught by the lymph nodes doing their job correctly.  One of my tumours was described as "the size of a grain of rice" and never showed on any scans, but because of my history the consultant knew to take action to find the tumour.  Treatment is effective.  It is not nice, but there is a very high probablility of a cure.

Thanks so much for your  reassurance 

I have been told that the positive  Lymph  node  is  very tiny  , very low grade  and in its Capsule

It's taken nearly a  Year  to get to this point  and I  still have to have  repeat Ct scan because of a  very tiny nodule with low trace on my Lung  which they are certain is not related  but unfortunately  having been told for 6 months by Gp and Ent Consultant  everything  is  OK,  I  have lost confidence  in anything  anyone tells me . 

I am now under a much more Specialist  Consultant who is going to  do the Tongue Surgery  with Robot 

Sdgepd6 said:

tiny nodule with low trace on my Lung  which they are certain is not related 

One in 500 chest X-rays find lung nodules and 99% are benign. They are common in older people. 
I have two. Both ok. 

I had all my tonsils, tongue base mucosectomy and neck dissection all in one go. I found it very difficult to swallow for 3-4 days. After that It was painful but I could eat soft foods (porridge, scrambled egg, mashed avocado, fish). I found anything acidic or spicy very painful - so avoided lots of fruits

3 months on I can eat everything - just a bit slow.