Friday was a good day. Not only was the sun out, and the weekend just around the corner, I got to see my favourite person, Deepti!

Let me start from the beginning. So I’ve got this hard thing in my lip, which basically holds it down my lip up into a very attractive snarl, while also pulling it into my mouth and slightly to the left, and makes it harder than necessary to drink, talk, smile, etc. I assumed it was a stitch that has yet to dissolve.

The lovely Deepti said she would fit me in quickly on Friday morning, so I went in to the Macmillan Cancer Centre and waited to see her. Before long, I was called in by one of the Clinical Nurse Specialists, and soon after that Deepti came in. First things first, she saw to fixing my hair, where I had managed to miss a bit when styling it in a hurry that morning and left some hair glue in without smoothing it down at the back. Sticky. She said it was somewhat endearing? I’m not sure that’s quite the word she used but I think it was the sentiment. Gosh, I’m a mess. How do you even see what the back of your head looks like? Doing much with my hair is all new to me and it seems I have a long way to go!

Anyway, hair crisis sorted, she looked at my mouth and said the problem was now just scar tissue and that the stitch had dissolved. A bit annoying, but what can you do. I’m now meant to massage it to try and get it to sort itself out. She said the flap was all healing nicely though and I don’t have to worry about being a bit rough with it because it’s all good. That was nice to know.

Then we discussed my next clinic appointment. It was scheduled to be before my next MRI, but as she had seen me now, it made sense to move it to after that. So that’s MRI end of August, next clinic appointment first week of September. ‘Pending a clear MRI result, I think we’ll refer you on to get teeth then’ she said.

Wait. Let’s do that again.

PENDING A CLEAR MRI, AT YOUR APPOINTMENT IN EARLY SEPTEMBER WE WILL REFER YOU TO GET TEETH.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Did I hear her correctly? Yes! Yes I did! As I was leaving, I also ran into Mr K. Now, Mr K is not one to commit to (or even mention) anything he is not sure about. ‘When is your next MRI?’ He asked. ‘End of August’ I said. ‘Well at your next clinic after that, let’s get you on to some teeth!’ Do-not-excitedly-hug-Mr-K-do-not-excitedly-hug-Mr-K-do-not-excitedly-hug-Mr-K-do-not-excitedly-hug-Mr-K (I refrained, but I did hug Deepti when I left).

I kept it under control until I left the building and then I did an excited squeal and jumped around a bit. When I arrived at work, one of my colleagues said he hadn’t seen me that happy in a long time. I thought about it for a moment, and I’d say that’s probably correct.

So I don’t know what this means, practically. It doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll have teeth in September, I don’t know how long it’ll take to get an appointment, and then I have no idea how long the process itself will take… weeks? Months? No idea. But this is movement!

I remember before surgery when I was trying to get an idea of a timeline of all this, they said it’s usually about a year before teeth. Always the over achiever, I asked them what was the quickest they have sent someone to get teeth, and they said 6 months. Well my next clinic appointment will be pretty much exactly 6 months post surgery. I am hopeful that they will all be finished by my birthday in December.

This is all pending a clear MRI of course. Every time I see my Oncologist, he tries to tell me it’s likely it won’t be clear, but my surgeons are pretty confident, and we have no idea to expect it to not be clear.

So I am counting down the days to that next Clinic appointment, and for that matter even to the dreaded MRI. I want teeth so badly. I would like to be able to breathe through my nose again too, but oh well, one win at a time. And teeth is definitely a big one! And at least then I won’t have to put up with people telling me how unimportant they are any more and that I don’t need them (I had the worst one of these conversations I’ve had yet just last week, it baffled me)!

HOORAY FOR TEETH!