Talking, Eating, and Figuring It Out: My Journey Through Tongue Cancer

When I think about some of my favorite things to do in life, I land on socializing around food. It’s the small gatherings of friends and family over great food that I remember most fondly. I love to go out to dinner. I relish in the coffee chats with friends and work connections. When I travel to new places it’s almost always the restaurants and the prospect of new creative food that gets me the most excited.

Lucky for me, my career of choice has allowed me to use my gift of gab. I’m an educator by nature and love to speak and present ideas. When I worked in schools, I often found myself doing the morning announcements, leading assemblies, running groups and having lunch chats with groups of kids. As a life coach, I get to conduct workshops, run groups, network and chit chat with colleagues and prospective clients.

Talking and eating. My favorite things.

It’s how I find connection. It’s how I find joy.

So can you imagine what a jarring diagnosis tongue cancer was in the winter of 2021. I had just started my coaching business earlier in the year and had begun college coaching not much before that. Now I was faced with uncertainty.

My biggest and most constant question to my medical team was “how long?” I was truly lucky that my prognosis for survival was positive, and I never truly felt my life was in danger. So I wanted to know how long it would take me to speak “normally” again. I wanted to know how long it would be before I could eat “normally” again. There was a plan. I would make it through this. But what would my life of talking and eating be on the other side of it?

“It depends.”

This is a frustrating answer when your two favorite things are on the line. Uncertainty is uncomfortable. It turns out that I could begin speaking again within a few days–although I had a trach for a few weeks–and more and more easily as time went on. However, my voice is permanently altered, and I needed to find the confidence to share out loud (that took a bit longer). Eating was a longer struggle. I had a feeding tube inserted into my abdomen for nine months, which allowed me to get the hydration and nutrition I needed through protein shakes. Very, very slowly I learned to swallow again and was able to eat enough food through my mouth to have my tube removed.

Eating and talking now.

To this day, eating is hit or miss. Some things go down super easy, like mashed potatoes with gravy or macaroni and cheese. Other things are more of a struggle. I don’t hesitate to speak whenever and wherever. I know I can be somewhat difficult to understand, but I roll with it. Eating and talking together–the socializing, connection part I loved so much–I still do it. But when I have “coffee” chats with people, I don’t really drink the coffee. I can’t talk and eat at the same time anymore. Nobody wants to see that!

I think this is why, more than ever, I connect so powerfully with teens and young adults. They’re often in that same space of figuring out who they are in a time of major uncertainty. They are navigating big emotions, unsure of what’s ahead, and craving connection. It’s that magic space of becoming–not really knowing what is on the other side of this huge, life-changing transition–but knowing that you have to navigate it anyway. You have to move forward.

Helping young people find their footing in the midst of change is what I do best. I know what it’s like to feel unsure, to lose something essential, and to slowly build a new version of yourself piece by piece. I still love talking and eating, but I also have found other ways to enjoy connection with others. That’s what life drafting is all about: creating a flexible, evolving version of your life that allows for edits, detours, and growth.