This is what I've learned, in two-plus years of no palate. . .

I got to thinking about this the other night, as I was rinsing out the enormous (well, not enormous, but it feels enormous) hole that goes directly from my mouth to my right sinus:1. Sinuses catch a lot of stuff.Seriously. The crap I wash out of my sinuses every couple of days would make a strong man shudder and a scientist's eyes gleam with excitement.2. You don't know how lucky you are to have a palate until you don't.You normal people have NO IDEA how much snot you produce. Trust me on this one.3. I can't eat flour tortillas under any circumstances, and should probably stay away from baked potatoes, Tater Tots, macaroni and cheese, and muffins.Some things stick to my obturator with the tenacity of an angry giant squid. Other things work their way into my turbinates, to be sneezed out a few days or a week later, causing me great alarm.4. I am so f.ing lucky not to have had to have radiation.I had a patient today who had radiation to his face and neck and who felt pain while eating a can of peaches. Just chewing had caused a pathological fracture. The surgical response was to remove half of his lower jaw. My pal Mary is dealing with a less-horrible, but still awful, sequel to radiation. I was very, very lucky.5. When you have something that's considered rare, information and statistics and so on change in a matter of months.When I started the journey with CANSUH, the stats were that three of every four patients that got what I have, polymorphic low-grade adenocarcinoma, were...
Source: Head Nurse - Category: Nurses Authors: Source Type: blogs