Just before Christmas I went for a dental check-up. The dentist found an ulcer under my tongue. It had been sore, but I didn't associate it with anything sinister. But he knew it was suspect.
He referred me to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King's Lynn. He looked at me and said: "Don't worry, Mrs Gaunt." I said: "I won't. I only worry when there's something to worry about."
Ever since my first child, Belinda, was born with cerebral palsy, I haven't worried about things until they happen. She couldn't walk, talk, feed herself or sit up. She was just helpless, like a great, big baby. I looked after her at home but just before her tenth birthday I went into her room and found her dead in her bed. It felt like my life was over.
A big thing like that changes your priorities. I never once thought to myself: "Why me?" I thought: "Why not me?"
A week after the appointment I went to the Queen Elizabeth. They did biopsies and put the stitches under the tongue where they had removed some of the flesh. For about a week I could only open my mouth half an inch. I was speaking like a ventriloquist.
A week after the biopsy I was called in and told I had tongue cancer. I managed not to scream, but I was stunned. I don't smoke, so how I got it I don't know. But I have great confidence in the skill of surgeons; I knew it had been detected early and that something could be done.
I was determined to think positively, but it was hard. I was sent to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, where I met my surgeon, Leo Cheng. I stuck out my tongue and he told me: "We are going to have to remove part of it."
I'm a trained soprano. As a little girl I used to take the solo in our village's Methodist church and, as a family, we used to sing round the piano in the evenings.
For 20 years I have sung in a local ladies' choir called the Phoenix singers. Since my husband died, singing has been the main thing in my life. I told Mr Cheng I was worried I would lose my voice. He said he wouldn't be touching the vocal cords.
I went into hospital on January 18 and had the operation the next day. When I heard that the operation would take 12 hours, I realised how incredibly intricate it must be.
They took skin and part of one of the main arteries from near my wrist. They connected the artery to the artery in my neck to get the blood flowing and then sewed the skin onto my tongue.
When I woke up in the recovery room I felt terrible. I felt like I'd got a 20-ton weight on my head. I didn't realise how swollen I was until three or four days later.
When I was allowed out of bed to go to the loo, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. I though: "It's either Humpty Dumpty or Frankenstein's monster."
My mouth still feels very strange. It just doesn't feel like my tongue and won't always behave as I want it to. It feels a little thicker at the back and slightly swollen.
It is extraordinary to think that I have a bit of my arm in my mouth. I'd heard of heart by-passes, but I really didn't know they could do this sort of thing.
I think the skin in the arm is more sensitive to heat than a normal tongue as I can't have food or drink as hot as I once did.
I have one scar running from just behind the ear to the collar bone and another running down the front of my neck.
I was in hospital for two weeks and then in bed at home for another 12 days. For the first five days I couldn't speak because of the tracheostomy. I had to write messages to people.
When one of the surgeons left my bedside he said: "Have a nice day". I beckoned him back and wrote down: "Please don't use that Americanism."
There was another doctor who said: "How do you manage to look so serene?" I wrote down that I deliberately switched off and thought of my childhood in Bedfordshire. I thought about swimming in lovely, clear streams and walling through the lanes with the hawthorn bushes.
When the tracheostomy was removed there was a tiny, squeaky little voice there. My sister said she recognised it, but to me it wasn't my voice at all. I sounded like Marlon Brando in The Godfather.
It's much better now, but I still have problems with the 'sh' and 'ch' sound.
I had a speech therapist in hospital. I start off with very basic exercises, such as sticking my tongue out and trying to touch the tip of my nose and chin.
The first word I had to say was 'caterpillar'. It's a very useful word because you use the back of your tongue to say the 'c' and the front of the tongue to say the 't', and the 'l' lifts the tongue. I had to say 'ca, ca, ca' and ta, ta, ta' to begin with. It was a very gradual process.
My smile was very crooked at first, but it's straightening up now. I 've got lip exercises, such as slowly opening the mouth as wide as possible and then closing it slowly, and holding the lips together and then releasing them.
The tongue exercises are designed to build up muscle flexibility. I have to move my tongue rapidly in and out of my mouth rather like a cat does when it laps up milk, and flick it out rather like a lizard or chameleon does when it catches a fly. I'm having some fun with those.
As far as my singing voice goes, it's coming back. I know how to take care of my vocal cords.
At the moment I am not putting too much pressure on the high notes. I'm practising my scales regularly and I'm please with the way I'm improving. Of course, you need good diction to sing well. If I couldn't sing I would be deprived of my greatest joy.
If I was not singing abound the house, the neighbours would come and ask if I was all right.
Our next concert is in aid of the Maxillofacial unit at Addenbrooke's. It's in the Catholic church in Swaffham on June 8. Mr Cheng is coming with his family and I'm hoping to sing in at least half of it.
Mr Cheng has told me that he was able to remove all the cancer, but he couldn't promise that it wouldn't return. But I feel very upbeat about things. Life's a dangerous business, full-stop.
Soon I will be singing operatic arias at the top of my voice and the neighbours will be saying: "For goodness sake, stop that noise."
Diagnosis
"Oral cancer is the sixth largest cause of cancer worldwide", says David Adlam, consultant Maxillofacial Surgeon at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge. "In the UK it accounts for 2pc of cancers, with 2,500 cases annually."
"Even though it kills more people in the UK that skin cancer or cervical cancer, it's hardly talked about by anyone except the late journalist John Diamond, who has raised the disease's profile. The main symptom is an uncomfortable ulcer or lump in the mouth that persists. Most ulcers are on the side of the tongue or at the bottom of the mouth. The further back in the mouth the growth, the worse the prognosis."
"If you have an ulcer or lesion in your mouth for longer than three weeks, you should consult a doctor. The earlier it is caught the better, because it is smaller."
"The survival rate for those who have treatment is more than 75 pc. The disease is related to smoking and alcohol but, for some patients, there is no obvious cause. Treatment is surgery and, sometimes, radiotherapy and chemotherapy and chemotherapy, depending on the extent of the tumour."
"The operation takes 12 hours. First we remove the tumour and the lymph nodes in the neck. The we insert what is called a "free flap" from another part of the body, usually form the forearm because the soft skin feels nice in the mouth."
"Rarely, we have to do a permanent tracheostomy, which means you breathe through a hole in the throat."
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