Photo by Angiola Harry on Unsplash
On March 2, 2026, I underwent major surgery for Stage 4 oral cancer.
Doctors removed a 2.2 cm squamous cell carcinoma malignant lesion that had invaded my jawbone. Thankfully, they achieved clear margins of 0.7 cm during surgery. My procedure included a wide resection with rim mandibulectomy, neck dissection, and a forearm free flap reconstruction for posterior right mandible squamous cell carcinoma.
My cancer was staged as T4a, which is classified as Stage 4 because the tumor had invaded the bone.
One of the biggest blessings in all of this was learning that the cancer had not spread to my lymph nodes. During surgery, doctors checked and removed 83 lymph nodes from the right side of my neck, and thankfully they all came back negative for cancer.
Even hearing good news during cancer treatment feels surreal.
Honestly, the first few days in the hospital are still kind of a blur to me.
I would wake up hurting, a nurse would come in with pain medication, and then I would drift back to sleep again. Everything felt foggy and dreamlike. Part of me was still in disbelief that I even had cancer in the first place. Suddenly being in a hospital recovering from major surgery felt impossible to fully process.
For the first several days, the nurses had to check my “flap” every single hour, even throughout the night. The flap was created using tissue and skin grafted from my right forearm to reconstruct part of my mouth and jaw. I also had a skin graft taken from my thigh to cover my forearm donor site.
Sleeping for more than an hour at a time was nearly impossible, but thankfully the pain medication helped enough that I could usually fall back asleep after each check.
As difficult as those days were, I cannot say enough good things about the hospital staff. From the surgeons and doctors to the nurses and support staff, everyone treated me with incredible kindness, patience, and compassion. During one of the scariest moments of my life, they made me feel cared for and safe.
Toward the end of my stay, I had to pass a swallow test before I could be discharged. They tested me with different substances including barium, pudding, and jello to make sure I could swallow safely after surgery.
I passed with flying colors.
I cannot even describe how happy I felt in that moment because I knew it meant I could finally go home.
In total, I spent 8 days in the hospital.
The hospital did exactly what it was supposed to do, but nothing compares to the feeling of finally walking back through your own front door after something like this. That ride home felt like freedom.
This surgery changed my life forever, but it was also the beginning of my fight to survive.
I’ll share more about recovery after surgery and what happened next in my upcoming posts.
Thank you for following my journey. 🕯️
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