Bob Flavin

t has been three years since my mouth cancer diagnosis and I’m still being treated for it. I have had to retrain to be able to speak as the surgery to remove the tumor also removed much of my soft pallet and teeth. In 2024 my cancer returned after radiotherapy failed and trismus set in meaning my jaw won’t open very much which is a side effect of radiotherapy. At that stage I became inoperable so I became an Oncology problem. The tumor had spread all over my mouth and I nearly bled to death when it found a blood supply and ended up spending more time in St James’s Hospital. 2025 didn’t slow down the cancer as I continued to lose weight and grow another tumor by February 2025 the local palliative care team had come in to help with pain relief and prepare for the end of my fight. Oncology in St James’s changed my treatment and within a couple of weeks I started to feel like a new man, the visible tumor was getting smaller. I spent the next few months getting my chemo and immunotherapy until one scan showed no activity which is good news but seeing how aggressive my cancer was we didn’t pop any corks just yet. Treatment continued through Christmas and I January I had a heart attack while out walking and ended up getting a stent put in and meeting a whole new team of medical professionals in Cardiology! My treatment continued after a short break for my heart problems and my next PET scan came back clear. I’m still on treatment and monitoring so I just can’t get back to much work and not being able to speak properly is very limiting in what I can do. I would love to raise awareness of head and neck cancers and most especially Mouth cancers as it’s now the 7th most common cancer in Ireland and we need to make ourselves Fierce hard to kill like me. Please help if you can and spread the word