A father-of-four has recalled the time he was told he only had months to live after water started spurting from his nose.
51-year-old Phil Sledden-Houston is a father-of-four and a heavy smoker from Middleton, England, who was left in shock after attempting to drink water one day only for it to come out of his nose almost immediately.
After he rushed to the hospital in search of answers, Phil was hit with more bad news as doctors told him he had a giant lump the size of a tennis ball growing inside his cheek.
To make matters even worse, the man was told that he only had months to live if the cancerous growth wasn’t removed immediately.
“I’ll never forget the surgeon telling me how serious it was, the tumor was in my cheekbone, and he thought it had been hidden for four years,” Mr. Sledden-Houston recalled in an interview with Manchester Evening News.
“It was the size of a tennis ball and had to be removed. It was a massive operation, and it took me months to recover.”
As the father-of-four revealed, his only chance of survival was undergoing a risky surgery during which the surgeons removed the tumor from his face.
Though his face was left disfigured after the surgery, Phil survived the ordeal and dropped cigarettes for good. He has since also relearned how to eat and speak and had a facelift that helped him regain his confidence.
“It looks like I’ve had a tiny stroke, but I have been incredibly lucky as not everyone makes it through,” he added.
“In October 2019, I had a facelift which has given me much more confidence and I only have a faint scar now.
“One of the biggest challenges was learning to eat and talk just using my left-hand side of my face, as I have no teeth on the other side. I’ve now been in remission for just over three years, and I have never felt better.”
Following his ordeal, Phil has quit smoking and is now also urging other smokers to learn from his mistakes and drop cigarettes from their lives.
“My taste improved and I also started to save money, all of these were incentives to stop smoking but being diagnosed with cancer was definitely my wake-up call as I would have continued smoking,” Phil says.
“I needed the shock of being diagnosed with stage 4 cancer to stop, and I urge everyone to give quitting a go before you end up like me.”
What are your thoughts on this matter? Let us know in the comments and don’t forget to SHARE this post with your family and friends. For more news and stories, follow us on Facebook!