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Monitoring:

    It is now August 2003, a year since I started my radiotherapy treatment and eight months since my surgery. I am still clear of disease and improving physically and mentally.

    Physically, my tongue and mouth are less painful, a small amount of saliva has returned, and I hardly notice the discomfort with my shoulder and neck. Over the past couple of months I have completed a course of dental treatment to clean up my teeth and repair some minor defects. Apart from problems opening my mouth wide enough, the experience was less traumatic than expected.

     Nourishment is still a major issue due to a total lack of appetite and extremely limited sense of taste. I am never hungry so the only incentive I have to eat anything is the knowledge that I will fade away if I don't. My diet is also limited by lack of saliva and a sensitivity to acidic or spicy foods. Everything has to be awash with gravy or sauce of some description, lukewarm, and bland. Liquid intake is constrained by the same factors, so water, tea, milk and non acidic fruit juices are as adventurous as it gets. Even very weak alcoholic drinks cause a lot of discomfort and are best avoided.

     Mentally, it has been a struggle to shift my focus from cancer back to a more normal life. Each successful monthly hospital visit reinforces my confidence, and reduces my anxiety that it will return. I still have difficulties dealing with stressful situations but experience fewer panic attacks than previously. Undoubtedly, this last year has been the most stressful in my life and the traditional British stiff upper lip has quivered more than once.   As my wife would no doubt testify, I am not the same person I was before my illness. Having the grim reaper standing unexpectedly, and uncomfortably, close for a while changes your perspective on life. Now, I am less tolerant and more cynical in disposition, qualities none too endearing to a partner.  Hopefully the clinical news will continue to be good and I can get away from cancer as a conversation topic and return to life's more important issues, soccer and the weather. Meanwhile, I take life one precious day at a time.

If you are reading this as a person with, or close to someone else with, cancer, looking for hope and comfort, be assured that there are tens of thousands of survivors from this disease.