My Journey With HPV Throat Cancer – Recovery At Home

To start at the beginning of my HPV Journey, you can read this post first but if you’ve read them all, let’s continue with recovering at home.

It definitely felt good to be home from the hospital – to be able to wear all of my own clothes and  sleep in my own bed.  I spent a lot of time in bed for the first 2 weeks after surgery!!

My throat was in a lot of pain – just as my doctor had warned.  I have a high tolerance for pain as well as not loving to take medication so I rested a lot.  I gave myself permission to rest!  That being said, the day I got home it was business as usual and I found myself folding laundry!!  What was I thinking?!?

My routine consisted of taking the prescribed meds daily (an antibiotic, a non steroidal anti inflammatory pill and  a prescribed mouth wash), Tylenol Regular Strength every 4 to 6 hours, drinking green tea, green juice and chicken broth and eating unsweetened organic apple sauce.  With this diet it’s needless to say I lost a lot of weight – 11 pounds to be exact!

The pain was tolerable for me after the Tylenol kicked in.  As it was wearing off though,  it of course worsened.  I would feel it not only in the back of my throat but also shooting through my ears.  According to the post-op paperwork this was normal.  I couldn’t eat or drink while in this state but laying down seemed to do the trick to ease it a bit until it was again time to take the Tylenol.  This usually took about 20 minutes.

My neck had the wound from the surgery.  While it didn’t hurt, it definitely looked Frankenstein-esque and I had to be mindful of how I slept.

My tongue also hurt and was swollen from the clamp that was holding it down during surgery.  It somehow affected my taste buds – anything I tried to eat just didn’t have the full flavor I remembered.  I also couldn’t eat or drink anything too hot or too cold.  I worked on graduating to more solid foods like mashed potatoes or even smoothies but even that was painful when swallowing.  I believed my body would heal – it naturally wants to heal so I knew it was all just temporary and each day would be better and better.

While in bed I did a lot of reading and listening to inspirational audios.  Anything by Louise Hay was my go to.  I also did some sketching.  My husband had to take over the cooking and mostly everything else as I wasn’t able to drive yet.

My BFF Pam came to visit a couple of times but I could only muster up enough energy for about an hour or so before I had to get back into bed and rest.

At this point I still wasn’t telling anyone about the cancer or surgery- not my girls, my mom, clients, friends or extended family.  I didn’t book any photo shoots for the remainder of May and only did work I could do at home at my computer once I was able to get out of bed for a few hours.

Then Mother’s Day weekend came up – how was I going to hide this from my mom?!?

We ended up going over to her place and ordering in – I definitely couldn’t cook – or eat for that matter!  I wore a turtle neck to cover up the wound on my neck and I timed it so that we’d be at her home during peek Tylenol hours so I could at least get through eating soup.  She said I looked sick so I told her I had a soar throat.  Her reaction – “don’t kiss me – I don’t want to catch it!”  I had to keep myself from laughing – no worries mom – you won’t catch what I have!! 🙂

On the morning of May 15th I got out of bed quickly to get ready for my follow up appointment and blacked out / fainted for a minute on my way to the bathroom.  I was fine except must have twisted my knee and ankle on the way down because it hurt when I got up.

My husband came with me to the followup to hear the results of the lymph node tests.  I wasn’t stressed – I knew it would be ok.  I was visualizing this meeting and playing it over and over again in my head since I was first diagnosed

My doctor wasn’t happy about the weight loss and was surprised I still had so much pain when swallowing.  I explained how I was taking the Tylenol and went over what I was able to eat.  He had a puzzled look on his face  and said the Percocet he prescribed should have been helping with the pain.  What Percocet?!?  I was taking Tylenol…Regular Strength!

On the day I came  home from the hospital we stopped at the drugstore to pick up the prescribed meds – an antibiotic, a non steroidal anti inflammatory medication, a mouthwash and there was also a pain killer – OxyContin.  There was no way I was going to take that!!!  As I mentioned before I have a high tolerance for pain and I’m not into drugs – prescribed or otherwise so I left them with the pharmacy.

My doctor was shocked!  His facial expression was amusing to me – totally dumbfounded!  He said in all his time as a surgeon he’d never seen or heard of anyone not taking the prescribed pain medication after having robotic throat surgery.  Well now he has!! 🙂

I also had to meet with the speech pathologist and a nutritionist.  They were all on me about the wight loss.

The result of the followup – ALL GREAT!!!  No further treatment necessary – just as I suspected!!

Now that I was in the clear I felt comfortable telling my girls, my mom and even some friends.

My girls were cool about it because again,  I was cool and chill about it.

My mom was another story!!  She was in complete shock – 2 fold – one for the fact that I had cancer and also for the fact that I was able to hide everything for all of those months.  Well it was all out in the open now!!

Soon after the follow up visit I had a complete mindset shift.  I was done and bored of laying in bed and feeling like a patient.  I could immediately feel the shift in my body and I was able to start eating more solid food and living my life beyond the confines of my bed.

If you have any questions, post in the comments.  Happy to help if I can!