‘Do you trust me?’ is essentially what Mr. K said to me on that Friday back in November, before we went in to take this second cancer out.
‘Yes.’
‘Then I’m going to do whatever it takes to get it out.’

I remember agreeing wholeheartedly. I was scared it had come back, I just needed him to get it out. On that day, I had the overwhelming feeling of relief that I was back with my team, and they would do what needed to be done.

Fast forward to the packing change surgery I had two weeks ago… Although I wasn’t sure where I was at with everything when they sent me home, I had confidence that my team would have done whatever they thought was best. And, as my psychologist pointed out, while I didn’t have answers, I was armed with the knowledge that I now had a way to contact them if things did, in fact, feel dire.

By this stage, and after all we’ve been through, of course I trust them. With my life.

It’s been almost two weeks since I’ve been home, and I’ve just been working out what state I’m in.

I can drink, but I’m keeping that restricted to only water, tea, and coffee (and the occasional glass of wine, obviously). I’ve worked out a system where I can tilt my head backward after drinking liquids and try to drain it down my throat when it inevitably escapes through the plastic roof of my mouth.

My ear still appears to be filled with liquid, and yawning or swallowing can make it pop in a rather disconcerting way. But I’m sure I have issues with my jaw and the joints in my face too after all they’ve done, so that could be adding to the problems.

So I’m off soup and smoothies, which is in some part a relief, I was getting very bored with them. Soft solids it is. I’m eating lots of eggs and baked potatoes. Starting to branch out a bit to see what else I can get through. I had vegetarian meatballs and cous cous yesterday. Up until now I’ve needed a rest from eating every few days or so because my jaw and mouth starts to hurts, but that seems to be mostly behaving. I remember that it was the same after my surgery almost 3 years ago. Oh, and the jaw stretching device has made a comeback so that’s fun…

I’ve been offered conversations with the Dieticians to give me supplements and thickening powder for liquids, but I politely declined. Trying to manage drinking liquids, no matter how thick, is not something I would like to embark on. Not to mention how depressing it would be to only be consuming sludgy stuff. The placement of the plate, although driving me mad because it’s not fixed, seems to be making it ever so slightly easier to eat soft food so that’s good. That keeps me happy.

When I wake up after sleeping, it takes some time to convince the plate to go back to where it’s supposed to go, but we get there. We are coexisting as well as possible until we can move forward with the reconstruction, whenever that might be…