I was asked to present a day in the life of me as a head & neck cancer treatment patient.
For those in the dark about who I am and what happened to me - the short version is I was living in Saigon with a very sore throat. Fast forward a few months and I had 1/3rd of my tongue removed, both tonsils, the tumor, a neck dissection (removal of 30 lymph nodes) chemotherapy and had my neck radiated like pork crackle all of which resulted in a loss of 25kgs and eating via a feeding tube for nearly 2 years.
Anyway, I am always banging on about how we need to ensure, as a collective group of people that we continue to fight to live our BEST food life, even when we can’t swallow nor breathe, talk and eat at the same time.
Food is a very big part of every day life, social connections and has a name “commensality” it is the one thing that binds us socially as a species.
The vernacular of head & neck cancer. It’s a brutal journey.
I talk about mediation in this episode and use Sam Harris’s Waking Up
Ep 53 - A day in the life of me.