Who? Why? What?

Day 1 – Who? Why? What?

So who am I? What’s it all about? Well I am an Actress, a Writer,a Yogini and a recent Mouth Cancer Survivor.

I was just a 30-year-old, newly wed when I received shocking news that ‘I’ of all people, health freak, clean living, Yogini me had stage 2 mouth cancer. Oh and did I mention, I was breastfeeding my six month old son?

A routine family trip to the dentist revealed that the ulcer that I had been complaining about to the same dentist for years (!) was in fact a tumour about to enter stage 3!

For those that don’t know. Cancer has 4 stages. My tumour was in the last of stage 2 growth. All 2.5cm in diameter had nuzzled itself a nice nook inside my left cheek. Although I was in a lot of pain, my wonderful dentist kept telling me it was nothing, and I, being the afore-mentioned health freak, and not knowing anything about mouth cancer – believed him.

Yes, yes I know stupid, ignorant and naive. But I did. Twice I asked him to remove wisdom teeth, thinking maybe they were the cause of all the malarkey. Twice he obliged. Once he even gave me antibiotics for it. His take was that I was chewing my cheek in my sleep. One side. Again, I believed him.

For the record – ANYTHING that does not heal in your mouth after 6 weeks, MUST be investigated – DO NOT take any excuses – please.

Had I known this, had I even been aware of the existence of mouth cancer, it could have saved me a lot of pain. However, years went by, and now I can count my blessings that I’m actually alive and well.

The Dr’s couldn’t really believe that it had progressed so slowly over such a length of time. It was extremely aggressive with a re-occuringly bad attitude. Mouth cancer also kills over 50% of its warriors.

In May 2008 I travelled at the speed of light from being a breast-feeding, healthy, young mama to being a cancer patient. After numerous tests within 2 weeks from diagnosis, I was booked in for my first surgery.

They were excising the tumour, however, they had no idea how deep it was, therefore best case scenario I could awake tumour gone, cheek stitched together to join up the gap. Worst case I could have tissue removed from my wrist to fill the hole in the cheek, a skin graft from my leg, a neck dissection, maybe a piece of my jaw removed, to be re-constructed with thigh bone, oh and perhaps a little external re-construction to my face. They could tell us no more until after the op, and yes they would take into account my profession as an Actress, but my alternative option was apparently death. It was great to know that had my dentist done his job properly early on, I could have had day surgery, just a little light lazering.

Weighing up the options, handling the meltdown of my family, my marriage, my brain left me dizzyingly agreeing to succumb to the knife and the abyss beyond. In between caring for my infant, I pillaged all alternative health information I could find, I rattled all my worldwide Yogi contacts for information and scooped up the nuggets of wisdom. I did a crash course in alternative cancer healing, surfing the web until the early hours whilst baby and hubby slept.

I decided to undergo the op and then follow it up with a hammering of alternative health. I armed myself with homeopathic remedies, I ordered a Greenstar juicer, I bought new pyjamas from Primark and off I went. I would be green juicing myself out of this mess when I got back.

Well lucky, lucky me. I woke to the best case scenario.Everyone was ecstatic. Except for me. I, who post pregnancy, had not felt the most fabulous before surgery thank you, had become an even more inflated, tired, groggy mess. Nasal tubed, de-hydrated and looking very much like a hamster on one side, I was not best pleased. I wanted my baby, I wanted a shower (hello!) and I wanted out of this joint. I had gone in feeling perfectly healthy albeit scared, I had woken up sick! I was now officially a sick person. A patient. I was attached to tubes and machines. How did this happen? Me who carried herbal tea everywhere (even to auditions!) and ordered hot water, me who had off the chart fantastically healthy blood counts during pregnancy, me who was as bendy as a newborn (almost), as youthful as a teenager (I played a 16-year-old in the Bill when I was 29) and as pure as the driven snow (ok I went too far) but still. Me.

Needless to say my worst fear happened. My body re-created the tumour. Time and time again. At one point an Organic 80/20 Raw vegetable diet actually completely healed the tumour. I went in for surgery and got sent home as a spontaneous remission had occurred!

However, falling off the Raw wagon, the exhaustion of caring for an infant (and a husband!) and the rest of life’s stresses quickly brought my mean antagonist back. With a vengeance.

To suffice I had 4 operations in 11 months. That means 4 operations and a baby in 17 months. A standing ovation please for my body! All 5 ft 1′ of it!

The last surgery in April 2009 had been impending since the beginning. My surgeons generously offered my thigh as an optional donor rather than the forearm so as to have a less exposed scar in view of my profession as an Actress.

After the tumour was excised, thigh muscle was taken to pad out the whole inside of my cheek, this was then grafted with skin also borrowed from the area. Even more alarmingly (for me) and spectacularly skillful of them, they then inserted an artery from my thigh into the neck to feed a blood supply to the donor in the cheek. For good measure they whipped out a few tiers of lymph glands.

They did an unbelievable job. Stupendous, incredible, unfathomably brilliant. I do not know how they did all this in 10 hours and I do not know how I actually built up the courage to let them. But they did and I did. We did it!

The scariest thing was the idea of having my neck dissected. I just couldn’t come to terms with the fact that I was allowing them to cut my throat, willingly. When the plastic surgeon explained the procedure in graphic detail, including the description of how they would be able to see through my neck all the way inside my mouth and up to the inside of my nose I wanted to faint, but when he gave me an alternative choice of certain death, I reluctantly agreed.

Actually, I was wrong about the scariest thing. 24 hours before surgery I was told that there was a 98% chance that I would wake up with a temporary tracheostomy. Yes – that is a hole in the throat to enable you to breathe. Famously, the first thing I did when I was semi-conscious in recovery and couldn’t speak and hardly see, was feel my throat to check for it, when it wasnt there I repeatedly banged my throat and made a thumbs up gesture to my husband, whilst trying to smile!

Once on the ward with my rugby shaped head and vegetabilised body I begun to have horrific morphine induced nightmares, daymares, just constant mares. I swam through seas of drugs and scratched my skin raw (morphine does that). The fantastically called ‘Pain team’ – who were actually headed by a Chinese Dr (who I loved for his happy and calm manner) with huge 80’s hair and a 3/4 length sleeved 80’s jacket (or was that also a hallucination?) cheerfully tried me on tramadole, co-codeine, anything-deine, to try to find something my body did not have an allergic reaction to. By the 5th day we had settled on paracetamol. All administered straight through one of my many tubes.

About 7 days in I had an idea. I was on a high with my new found achievements. I could now sit, stand and even limp slowly to the toilet, alone!  Thats huge when you start off unable to sit up or close your mouth (because the implant i.e piece of your leg, is so huge and swallon). Each new thing was painfully re-learned. In the beginning I had wondered if I would ever stand up, close my mouth or even pee again!

As I lay there delighted with my ability to heal and the discovery that although I had not seen it yet – my leg scar was not a thick line from hip to knee, but thanks to the wonderfully eccentric and skilled plastic surgeon Mr Stuart James(the one who gave me the detailed description of the op), I had an ‘experimental mini skirt scar’ in the shape of a ‘V’ which at the top of my thigh would not be see when wearing skirts. It also – I learned later looks like a shark bite, tres fantastic! He said we would have been in trouble had it not worked out, I said I’m glad you chanced it. Hey – after all that – it was the least of my worries – believe me!

Anyway I had an idea around about the 7th day. A pin-up style calendar to raise money for the hospital, featuring female, cancer survivors artistically and beautifully photographing their proud surgical scars and a documentary showing the making of it all.

Life’s curveballs such as the separation of my husband and I, my mothers diagnosis of lymphoma, her chemotherapy and my own healing process have made it impossible to start before now.

But now I start. From scratch. This is my journey. Thank you for joining me.

Related Articles

• Oral cancer – All Information (umm.edu)
• What You Need to Know About Throat Cancer (abcnews.go.com)
• Neck lump – All Information (umm.edu)
• Michael Douglas treating tumour as ‘curable disease’ (ctv.ca)
• Skin graft – All Information (umm.edu)