Tongue Cancer Surgery - 4 Years Ago!!

(Linking this post to With a Grateful Prayer and a Thankful Heart)
 
 Today is a very emotional day for me. It has been exactly 4 years since I had tongue cancer surgery. It really doesn't seem possible at times. If you would like to read about my surgery, click the link below, and then arrow down to the first few posts for May. My daughter, Emily, did an excellent (Amazing) job of keeping everyone up to date all through my 12 hour surgery.

May 2008 Archives

  I got all teary-eyed just rereading all of that. Mostly from reading all of the sweet messages that people wrote, and especially from our precious friend, Jay Dawn, that left us in Feb. She was and has always been such a big support to our family. Words just can't describe the emptiness I still feel about her passing. 

 With that being said, I hope to again make people aware just how important it is to use good dental hygiene, and to get your mouth checked regularly. Even the smallest place can turn into cancer.

 I was very lucky that mine was confined to my tongue. Half of my tongue is now muscle from my left arm. Amazing? Right! 

 If you read that part of my blog, you will see that on the 9th day I was talking! Amazing? Right! Extremely amazing! 
 I also had two Amazing doctors - Dr. Ghali and Dr. Kim! 

  My family (husband-Clay, son-Cody, daughter-Emily, and niece, Robin) was also Amazing through this whole ordeal - and believe me, it was an ordeal! This was the most helpless I've ever been in my life. ICU was a nightmare for me as I couldn't sleep, and I couldn't talk, and of course, no one was allowed to stay in there with me. I won't go into details, but it was such a relief to get to a room so someone could stay with me to be my voice. I used a dry erase board, but I was so weak that it was hard to write plainly what I needed or wanted. 

 I found this board a few weeks ago stuck behind my dresser. These were some of the last messages on it. I don't think they went together, but I just had to laugh out loud. 
 What is funny is that my hubby wrote the last sentence! Hello, I could hear! Just couldn't talk!

 I sincerely hope that you will pass this information along. If you are a smoker, then your chances of getting tongue/mouth cancer is greatly increased. I was in the 4 percentile! My doctors said they do this surgery on someone nearly every week. I had never even heard of this surgery until it happened to me. 

 Sadly, we had a friend that had the same surgery a couple of years ago, but she lost her battle. She was in stage 4 when they found it. 

 Again, let me say how very lucky and blessed I was that my dentist sent me on to be checked by an oral surgeon, and then to Dr. Ghali. I was also very, very blessed that I didn't have to take chemo or radiation!! 
  So I leave you with the first verse of this song. I am truly Amazed and eternally grateful that I am here to tell you MY story!

I stand Amazed in the presence 
 of Jesus the Nazarene, 
 and wonder how he could love me, 
 a sinner, condemned, unclean. 

 How marvelous! How wonderful! 
 And my song shall ever be:
 How marvelous! How wonderful 
 is my Savior's love for me!