As I posted last week about upcoming surgery to remove my 27 year old neck tumour. In this photo, you can see the neck tumour. It caused me so many problems.

The surgery was a complete success, and my surgeon was able to remove the whole tumour. The tumour was on or near the swallowing nerve. The surgery was on Thursday early afternoon.  I was back on the day stay unit by 6pm. I had to stay Thursday night due to the drain I had fitted.

I had to stay a second night because in the first 24 hours after surgery, the drain collected more than 100mls of blood and fluid. But thankfully, it started to really slow down.  Saturday at midday, they checked the drain again, and there were just 8mls. Which meant i was able to come home.

My husband was there visiting me both days so I wasn’t on my own. He got to watch them pull s good 8 inches of tubing from my neck. There was quite a lot of swelling in my neck, throat, and tongue, but that won’t last.

It’s now been 4 days since the surgery, and everything is almost back to normal.  My tongue still has a little bit of swelling, but it’s working better than it did 2 days ago. My swallowing has improved big time. My breathing is no longer restricted when lying down. My voice doesn’t seem to be crapping out when I try to have a conversation. Hopefully, as time goes on, the right side of my vocal cords will tighten up. I have my jawline back again. I’m so happy with  the results of my surgery. xXx

.. and my 27 year old neck tumour will be gone. No more difficulties with breathing when laying down. No more pain if I accidentally knock it. I’ll be glad to see my jaw line again. We’ve been waiting for 18 months for this surgery to be rebooked after it was postponed a week before the booked date. When we last saw my NF2 consultant last year, he said i shouldn’t have been waiting that long. Now we’re just 3 days away! Hopefully, I won’t be in hospital for long. This will be operation number 21. 😲 xXx

It’s been a crazy few months. I had a full in August and had been walking around for 3 weeks, thinking I had badly sprained my right leg. After giving in and going to a&e, we were told I had broken my leg. The Tibia close to my ankle had shattered and a small chunk off the Fibula. Long story short. I had a Stryker Hindfoot Nail inserted up through the Fibula because there wasn’t a way to attach a plate to the Tibia. I have screws to fix my foot in position. A few weeks after the first surgery, I needed a second surgery to swap a screw in my foot with a shorter screw as the first had shifted and was poking into the skin.

I’ve finally got a date for the neck tumour surgery that was postponed back in 2022. I will be admitted on the 13th of February.

It’s possible that I’ll be having other surgery this year with regards to NF2, but we’ll deal with them one at a time.

Yesterday, I had my annual MRI. Head to pelvis.  This was my first MRI since they surgically removed the ABI magnet from the surface of my skull. I used to get a lot of pain during the MRI, but a few years ago, they started to inject a local anaesthetic where my ABI is. That was bloody painful. Then I’d have my head bound with medical gauze and  a small square of plastic to prevent the magnet from being pulled out by the huge MRI magnets. Sounds like a hell of a routine to go through for images of my nervous system, doesn’t it? Well, now I just have my MRIs without all that fuss. It’s better for me and easier for the MRI team. I have an NF2 clinic in September, so I’m looking forward to finding out how the tumours are doing. Fingers crossed, nothing has changed.

The traffic on the M11 and M25 was an absolute nightmare.  But it would have been less stressful if arseholes that thought they were far too important, just patiently waited in traffic like the rest of us instead of trying to queue jump to the slip road and causing the inside lane and middle lane becoming chockablock. What is usually an hour drive ended up being a 2 hour drive home.