Mum with mouth cancer: 'My life is in their hands'

Deborah Horsley was diagnosed with cancer after finding an ulcer on her tongue in 2009.

Since then, the cancer spread to her gum and then to her jaw.

The latest operation in January to replace and rebuild her jaw failed when her body rejected the new jaw and tissue.

The 57-year-old mother of two, from Thetford in Norfolk, has now undergone 15 operations, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. She speaks candidly to the BBC about her hopes, her fears and her determination to remain positive at all times.

"Obviously I was nervous, but once I'm asleep, that's it," says Ms Horsley, recalling her last operation earlier this year.

She says she was glad to be put under anaesthetic as "I didn't want to know anything that was going on".

"Just do it - my life is in their hands."

She is no stranger to the operating table at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital with so many procedures behind her, including a complete rebuild of her tongue after her initial diagnosis.

Realising the latest jaw operation had failed, she said: "I was gobsmacked.

"It hadn't worked - all that I'd gone through.

"But I just had to get on with it. I had two choices and I was only going to choose the one choice - and here I am."

She was released from hospital before undergoing chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment.

"It was nice to come home. It was good to be home," she says.

Ms Horsley needed a lot of support as she could not use the stairs and had to live on the ground floor.

"It's just one of those things - I'll just get on with it and be positive," she recalls.

"But sometimes I never showed how anxious I was because I didn't want to worry my family.

"I was good at hiding things."

She admitted to thinking: "When it is going to end?"

"There were a few times when I thought I can't do this anymore, but then I'd talk with my family and my husband, and they were like, 'You will do this', and I snapped out of it."

Ms Horsley's daughters have been beside her throughout her illness.

Speaking about her mother's operations, Chloe Mallett says: "To be honest I didn't think I'd see her again, but I realise now that was my brain's way of protecting me - preparing me for the worst."

Her sister, Clarisse Arnold, says that after her mother's failed jaw operation, "it was like, is her body saying I'm not doing this anymore?".

"Has it given up? But no, in all honesty she would never have given up."

Richard James, an oral and maxillofacial surgeon, is one of a team who have treated Ms Horsley over the years.

Speaking after the failed procedure, he says: "Obviously for the patient it's a major setback - but for the surgical teams as well - we really do feel her agony.

"We work really well, we work long hours and we do the best we can for our patients but sometimes things are out of our control."

Ms Horsley has nothing but praise for her doctors and hospital staff who "were always there to talk to me - and they pulled me out of it, so I can't thank them enough".

"They have done everything possible to get me through this - and I'm here."

"I'm hoping that with the radiotherapy and the chemo that should be it, now," Ms Horsley says.

"It just had to be done - to get rid of it once and for all."

She attends a cancer support charity in a nearby town, "and yeah, I'm just living life with my family and friends - going for coffee", she says.

"I'm just looking after me, now."

Ms Horsley says the years of living with - and fighting - her cancer have given her a new appreciation for life.

"You've only got one life. Live it. Live it every day as if it's your last."

She says by talking about her story and highlighting the issues, it will "hopefully" help others "just to stay positive".

"If they see what I've been through, then maybe they will think, well, if she can do it, then I can do it, too."

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