I thought I had a sore throat — but it was tonsil cancer

A sore throat typically means you’ve caught a nasty cold, but for one woman, it was much worse.

Lisa Gooddy was stunned to discover her sore throat was actually tonsil cancer, resulting in radiation therapy that left the 51-year-old looking like she had been “cooked in a microwave.”

Growing up having chronic sore throats, Gooddy was no stranger to the symptoms she experienced — until a white patch showed up on her tonsil in 2019. Upon asking her general practitioner, it was written off as a tonsil stone.

“I used to suffer quite a lot with my throat and tonsils, so I went to the doctors a long time ago, about 12 months before [the diagnosis] and told them I was having trouble with my throat,” Gooddy told Kennedy News. “There was a white patch on my tonsil and I’ve had tonsil stones in the past, but, unfortunately, I wasn’t referred at that point, as they thought it was tonsil stones.”

But a year later, Gooddy, who described herself as “chatty,” noticed her voice was weaker and, after antibiotic treatments, was sent to a specialist. Instead of an easily treatable infection, doctors found Stage 2 tonsil cancer in 2020.

“We’d have meetings, and I actually couldn’t go to some of them one day. I felt absolutely drained, and I thought, ‘I can’t speak to anybody,’ ” she said. “This must have been the effect of the cancer on my vocal cords.”

The dead giveaway for cancer was her enlarged lymph nodes, which were “massive.”

“I said, ‘Is it cancer?’ and he said ‘yes,’ ” she recalled her visit to the doctor. “So he knew straight away.”

“I would like to say I am quite an optimistic person, although no one wants to hear those words,” she added. “But, I think I’d had issues for so long, it wasn’t a surprise because I knew there was something wrong.”

The customer service agent, who is also a mom of three, endured chemotherapy and radiation, which resulted in the skin on her neck becoming inflamed and painful.

The radiotherapy “destroyed” her saliva glands, causing her to suffer from dry mouth that has impacted her speech and ability to eat correctly. In fact, she can’t even lick an envelope.

“One of the really awful known side effects of the treatment is that you don’t have any saliva glands and constantly have a dry mouth,” she said. “Having a dry mouth all the time is really awful. It affects your speech, ability to eat, talk. I can’t lick an envelope.”

Now, she carries around a drink everywhere she goes and takes tablets to keep her mouth from getting too dry. She can only eat “slop” — due to her diet’s limitations — and no longer eats “for pleasure,” she eats because she has to.

“It affects so many things: If I’m going out, say to a restaurant, there potentially could be nothing on the menu that I could eat because I can’t have pepper,” she explained. “I ordered broccoli in a restaurant but it was al dente, and because I was hungry, I swallowed it, but I couldn’t breathe, so my husband had to do the Heimlich maneuver on me because it was lodged in my throat.”

Her family fears that they can’t go out to eat due to her restrictive diet, and since her diagnosis, Gooddy’s lost about 42 pounds due to cancer and treatments, which have affected her quality of life.

“Somebody said that it’s actually like you think about your mouth or skin being microwaved, basically that’s what’s happening,” said Gooddy, who recalled not feeling the effects of the therapy until afterward. “When they said that to me, I thought, ‘You know actually, that makes sense.’ You can imagine it was being cooked.”

“No wonder it does what it does to your mouth, because basically, if you think of what radiotherapy does to your skin and how delicate your mouth is, it’s like being burnt,” continued Gooddy, who also will not be able to breathe through her nose until she can get a surgery to fix it.

Just a day before she turned 50, Gooddy began treatment in February 2021, which involved 33 lots of radiotherapy and two lots of chemo.

Grotesque images of Gooddy’s tonsils show the strange white patch and her neck covered in wounds from the aggressive therapies to treat the 6-centimeter lump, which she claims was caused by the human papillomavirus, more commonly known as HPV. In most people, HPV doesn’t cause complications, although it can lead to genital warts or cancer in some cases.

“I think the hardest thing is telling people and your family. I think the person with it just thinks, ‘Ok, let’s get on with this now,’ ” she said. “Don’t get me wrong — you’re devastated, but you’re like, ‘Can it be treated? What can we do?’ “

But now, she’s in the clear. Ever since she reached remission in June, she’s been passionate about raising awareness for the health of the mouth, tongue and throat. Acting as an advocate for people concerned about their health, Gooddy is spreading knowledge about the tell-tale signs of head and neck cancer.

According to the Mayo Clinic, having HPV, using tobacco and drinking alcohol contribute to the risk of developing tonsil cancer. Signs and symptoms of the disease include earache, jaw stiffness, swelling and pain in the neck and difficulty swallowing. The specific kind of cancer is most prevalent in people over the age of 50.

“Check your mouth — it’s a cancer that people don’t seem to know about, and it takes two minutes to check your mouth, throat and neck for any changes,” she said. “And if there’s any sore areas or those that look different, go and see your GP and dentist, and if they don’t think it’s anything, but you’re still not happy, ask for a referral — don’t be put off.”