{"id":832,"date":"2018-05-19T12:07:27","date_gmt":"2018-05-19T10:07:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/?p=832"},"modified":"2018-05-18T12:09:46","modified_gmt":"2018-05-18T10:09:46","slug":"experience-i-cant-smile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/?p=832","title":{"rendered":"Experience: I can\u2019t smile"},"content":{"rendered":"

M<\/span><\/span>y cancer, an aggressive tumour on the salivary glands, was diagnosed in early 2015. I\u2019d first noticed the lump the previous summer, but tests proved inconclusive. It took a deep-tissue biopsy in January to confirm that it was cancerous. Because of where it was \u2013 and because it had been there for about 18 months \u2013 there was a good chance the cancer would be embedded in the nerves. The surgeon said he might need to cut those to remove the lump, in effect paralysing that side of my face. He wouldn\u2019t know until I was under the knife.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t really understand the impact of this. From the outset, I wasn\u2019t interested in my prognosis, because it didn\u2019t help me cope with my illness; trying to imagine life without facial movement was pointless. When I woke up, after a five-hour operation, I was told they\u2019d had to sever those nerves to root out the entire tumour. I couldn\u2019t move the right side of my face or make any facial gestures, and could open my mouth just wide enough to eat a piece of toast.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s only when you can\u2019t smile that you realise how central it is to nonverbal communication. Soon after coming out of hospital, I passed someone in the chemist and did that whole \u201cafter you\u201d pantomime, giving her a little smile. Except it wasn\u2019t a real smile \u2013 it was a sort of one-sided grimace. She gave me a confused and slightly mistrusting look.<\/p>\n

I asked my consultant how I could get my smile back. I\u2019m a project manager for an IT company, and I perform in a band, so nonverbal communication is really important for me. Plus I have a 10-year-old daughter, Mia. \u201cHow are you going to get a girlfriend if you can\u2019t smile?\u201d was her burning question. I was told it wasn\u2019t an option yet; the remaining nerves were being blasted by radiotherapy and there was a lot of scar tissue. I had my treatment and saw a speech therapist about facial physiotherapy. She referred me to another hospital, which specialises in facial palsies such as mine.<\/p>\n

My kind of facial paralysis isn\u2019t temporary, like\u00a0Bell\u2019s palsy<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 this situation was for ever, unless I went for it. So, in November 2016, I had a 14-hour operation. It was a complicated procedure, but I was determined to come out smiling. The surgeons took a nerve from my thigh and attached it to the cut nerves in my face, connecting them to my jugular vein. They put a deep layer of fat on top of the affected area, which kept the nerves warm and helped the blood supply from the jugular. After the operation, I kept haemorrhaging. They used leeches to control the bleeding. I lay in bed, covered in leeches, watching Trump win the election and thinking life was pretty bad. The next morning they operated again to stop the bleeding.<\/p>\n

I knew the lump would look ghastly, then settle down, but I cried as hard as I\u2019d ever cried after seeing myself in the mirror. It looked like a massive tumour. I\u2019d told Mia I was going to hospital to restore my smile, and that it wouldn\u2019t come back straight away. But this was awful. When I got home, she sat on my right, but asked to swap because she couldn\u2019t cope with how I looked.<\/p>\n

A year and a half on, I still can\u2019t smile. My doctors originally said it could take up to two years to see movement. Now they say it might take up to three. Of course I miss smiling with Mia, but there\u2019s a level of communication with someone intimate that is intuitive \u2013 we hug and laugh a lot, and she knows when I\u2019m smiling inside. She\u2019ll sometimes say she wished this had never happened, but our relationship is probably stronger than ever. She\u2019s shown empathy and intelligence, and understands that there\u2019s no such thing as normal or weird \u2013 just different.<\/p>\n

Now I choose my words carefully, talk more slowly and use more eye contact. It\u2019s interesting to see how other people cope when they meet me. I think there\u2019s a fear \u2013 of looking at me and not offending me. Everything I say is delivered with the same face, so you have to really listen to the words to work out what I\u2019m saying.<\/p>\n

While I\u2019m waiting to see if the nerves start working again, I\u2019d like an operation to help my face look more symmetrical. But I\u2019m pragmatic; I\u2019m alive, back at work, recording and performing my music, and raising awareness of facial cancers for\u00a0Cancer Research UK<\/a>. And, to Mia\u2019s delight, I\u2019ve got a girlfriend. She didn\u2019t know me before all this happened. It\u2019s good to know she wants me as I am.<\/p>\n

source:https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/lifeandstyle\/2018\/may\/18\/i-cant-smile-after-operation-surgeon-tumour-experience<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My cancer, an aggressive tumour on the salivary glands, was diagnosed in early 2015. I\u2019d first noticed the lump the previous summer, but tests proved inconclusive. It took a deep-tissue biopsy in January to confirm that it was cancerous. Because of where it was \u2013 and because it had been there for about 18 months […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=832"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":833,"href":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832\/revisions\/833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}