For nine months, I was trying to explain that something wasn’t right.
I was 45. A mum of three young children. Busy, tired, and doing what most people do — putting symptoms down to “one of those things” and trusting that if it was serious, someone would spot it.
But my body kept sending signals.
Liquid started coming out of my nose when I drank. My voice didn’t sound like mine. I found a small lump under my right ear. I went to appointments. I went back again. Follow-ups came and went. And each time, I left without an answer — trying to stay calm, trying not to look dramatic, trying to believe it would pass.
It didn’t.
In September 2018, the truth finally landed, with a thud. I had a large tumour at the back of my throat — in my right tonsil and soft palate — and it had already spread to lymph nodes. The consultant told me it was the biggest he’d ever dealt with. HPV-driven. Aggressive. Treatable, he said.
Then he looked at me and warned me I was facing “the journey from hell”.
He was right.
What finally exposed it wasn’t a scan or a routine check. It was a very severe sore throat — and then coughing up part of the tumour. Imagine that moment. The shock. The fear. The sickening thought: How long has this been growing inside me while I was being told nothing was wrong?
Treatment came hard and fast: seven weeks of radiotherapy and five weeks of chemotherapy.
And because I live in an island community, cancer didn’t just take over my body — it took me away from my home. I had to leave my children behind and spend weeks on the Scottish mainland for treatment, relying on family to hold everything together while I tried to survive.
I got through the treatment phase better than I expected.
But recovery is where the real cost showed itself.
Swallowing became almost impossible. The tumour was large and the treatment damage was brutal. My throat and tongue simply couldn’t do what they’d done my whole life — and the loss of something as basic as eating hit me like grief.
The weight dropped off me. My sister tried everything to keep me going with high-calorie smoothies, but I could only manage tiny amounts. After three months, I’d lost six stone. I was terrified of a feeding tube — but in the end it was that or starve.
I was admitted to hospital and fitted with a PEG feeding tube into my stomach. I was told “nil by mouth” because a video X-ray showed it was too dangerous for me to swallow. Too dangerous to do what most people do without thinking, every day of their lives.
Even then, I couldn’t accept giving up completely. I learned my own way to manage a little water — leaning my body at an angle, concentrating on every swallow — just to feel even a tiny piece of normal.
I survived with the PEG and slowly, painfully, began to rebuild.
In December 2019, I was able to have the PEG removed — but even now, I don’t eat normally. I can’t swallow lumps and never will. I’m liquid-only now. Some days I can manage, some days I can’t. There are days when even liquids won’t go down.
Radiotherapy also destroyed my salivary glands, so I live with a permanently dry mouth and sip water constantly. I have thick mucus — like slime — that gathers at the back of my throat and can choke me. And my voice changed dramatically because treatment left a hole in my soft palate. I can speak, but it’s not the voice I had before. It’s not the voice my children grew up hearing.
Specialists had given me only a five to ten percent chance of swallowing again at all. They didn’t know if I would be able to speak. I proved them wrong — not because it was easy, but because I refused to let cancer take everything.
It was a horrendous time. But my husband and I often reflect on how it brought us closer as a family. He cared for me in ways a husband should never have to. We have been to hell and back — and survived.
But this is what I need you to understand:
It didn’t have to get this bad.
If my cancer had been found when I first asked for help, my treatment would almost certainly have been less invasive. Those nine months gave the tumour time to grow. It meant I needed the strongest treatment they could legally give. It saved my life — and it also changed my life permanently.
I’m here. But I’m living a very different life.
So please — if you notice changes in your mouth or neck, don’t brush them off. Lumps. White patches. Lesions. Ulcers that don’t go away. Changes to your speech. Liquid coming out of your nose. Anything that doesn’t feel right.
Get it checked.
And if you’re not being heard, go back. Push. Keep pushing.
You never think it will be you.
It’s always someone else… until it is you.
I hope my journey has helped you recognise the signs of throat cancer — and given you the confidence to speak up. It’s your body, and you know when something isn’t right.
That’s why I’m proud to support the Throat Cancer Foundation’s Know the Signs campaign. It’s about two things that change outcomes: helping more people avoid throat cancer where possible, and making sure those who do develop it are diagnosed earlier, when treatment is often less invasive and recovery can be kinder.
Please support the campaign if you can — it’s how we help others avoid this brutal disease and the life-changing side effects it can leave behind.
Find out more and support here:
https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/throatcancerfoundation
Thank you,
Lorraine Stout.
