No update today

I had to cancel my appointment with my ENT today. Woke up with an absolute skull splitting headache. MOF, after I take a shower, I'm heading back to bed.

Revelation: I think my benedryl are causing my cough. They're drying me out badly since I'm taking so many for my spring allergies. So, as of midnight last night, I'm off them for a week or so. So far, I've not had the horrible coughing spell or the dry/itchy throat that precedes them so many times.

Something else to put in my mouth..

OK. Get your mind out of the gutter. :)

Actually, I've been having horrible coughing fits over the last two or three weeks. I'd originally put them down to allergies, but I don't think that's what's going on. And, of course, every time I have one of these fits (and I'm talking to the point I gag and spit up), my poor throat is made raw and sore again.

So, after having yet another one this afternoon, I called Dr. Mundy. His suggestion is to rinse my mouth several times a day with baking soda/salt and water. He also recommends cough drops.

So here I am. Two more things I have to figure out how to work into my day. I definitely will because the throat is keeping me from eating, but between these two new things, dry mouth rinse, sore mouth gargle, throat rinse, fluoride treatments, Ensure and water, I'm not sure I'll ever have my mouth empty!

And I'll mention this to Dr. Lehr on Thursday. Since he's the ENT guru, he may have some suggestions...I'm just hoping it's not something else I have to stick in my mouth.

(Oh and the itchy skin is just about healed. WOOHOO!! I'll keep using my aloe cream over the next several days, but once this jar is gone, I think things will be well under control. I'm only having to use it twice a day now rather than four times and possibly five. Much improvement.)

Now...I'm off to bake some lemon sugar cookies for my good buds at Fentress. We'll drop by this week and give them to them.

Discovery...

The Walmart brand of Ensure is much tastier than the brand name Ensure.

Seriously. Walmart's Vanilla Shake is drinkable without much effort. Ensure's brand of vanilla drink is just about impossible to get down.

Quick Update

Just a quick update here since there's not much going on.

I've gotten the worst of the itching under control. Aloe vera cream is the way to go for me, so I'm slathering it on three or four times a day. The only time it really bothers me is at night (figures) when I'm laying in bed. The only thing I can figure is there's some reaction between me and the sheets or the pressure on my skin. And of course, it spring here in Central Texas and that means oak mold. An allergy whose main reaction for me is insane itching. So I have the radiation thing going and the allergy thing going. Sometimes it's hard to tell what's causing the problem, so I keep both my aloe vera cream and my Claritin (which doesn't do a thing for anything other than oak mold itching and the flu like symptoms oak can give me) at hand. If one doesn't work, I go with the other. :)

Also, I'm still only able to get down Ensure. Which sucks. Because Randall had pizza last night and the smell almost drove me over the edge. Unfortunately until the mouth sores go away and the sore throat gets better, I'm afraid to even try solid food. Also, my lower gums are going to have to recover some since the radiation treatments made them very sensitive.

And the final annoyance is my throat. I keep having coughing fits...I have no idea if that's something going on with my throat being raw from the radiation or my allergies. Either way, the coughing is keeping my throat red and raw. I think I'm going to get some blasted cough syrup and see if that helps.

Next update will probably be late next Thursday. I've had my weeks sort of messed up and had my follow-up appointment with Dr. Lehr set for this week. It's not until next Thursday.

Hopefully by then there will be more positive news on the side effects front.

Down....Over...Up...Down...OH right there!!

Whhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.....new side effect.

ITCHING!!!!!!!!!!!! Horrible, constant, no relief itching!

Apparently this is common, but all I can say is it's maddening. It reminds me of the time when I had hives...only with hives, diphenhydramine worked. Nothing seems to work with this.

I've tried straight lidocaine, rose hips oil, rose hips cream, vitamin e cream, silver sulfadiazine cream and hydrocortizone cream. None of it works. I'm now trying a compound of lidocaine and silver sulfadiazine to see if it works.

The bad news is this is a side effect that can last for several weeks so it may well tip me over the edge of sanity before it's all said and done. If the compound doesn't work, I'll be on the phone to Fentress tomorrow in search of other options.

No Roasting. No Toasting. Don't know what to do...

Man. It's only Tuesday and I'm already adrift.

Actually, that's not true. The last four days have been pretty bad. Food has ceased to have any real meaning in my life. Fortunately, Randall picked up the Walmart brand of Ensure on Saturday and I've been able to get down nearly 3 a day of those. The Equate label actually has more calories than the other brands, so he nabbed them. I'm down another five pounds since last Thursday, and that can't go on.

Those are helping because no food for three or four days is really not pleasant. We're going to skip taking cookies by Fentress this week because I really need more time to get on my feet...and that is seriously hindered by the allergies that have come in to play this week.

So we'll hit Fentress next week with some lemon sugar cookies and cream cheese banana bread. This week, I'll take it easy, though I do plan on canning some strawberry jam. (YUM)

Stick a fork in me....

I'm DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OHMIGOD I'M SOOOOOOOOOOOO HAPPY!!!!!

Seriously, though, today was my last day for radiation treatment. I saw Dr. Mundy yesterday, and he seemed happy with the results. He said I had done about the way he expected, so there was no mention of extending this one week.

And I have to say I'm really glad, because the last week and half have been murder. The sore throat and mouth sores have kicked my butt. Food has been a real problem (as in not eating for two days running, now), but I'm hoping I can get around that in the next day or so. I will say that if the treatment went on through next week, I'd probably have to get a feeding tube installed. Even though I've got the weight to lose, not eating for two or three days straight has made me really weak and cranky (poor Randall). Since the treatments started six weeks ago, I've lost 18 pounds and I'm pretty sure there will be another five until things heal enough for me to start eating consistently again. Right now, I can only manage one scrambled egg a day.

The other side effect that has really become a problem are the two burned areas on my neck. Those, though, I expect to get considerably better by early next week. I have a burn ointment to put on and I'm going back to my rose hips cream today. Lots of red skin and peeling, but nothing that won't fade fairly soon now that it's not getting zapped every day.

All in all, this hasn't been the worst thing I've ever been through. I will say, though, that I'm ecstatic that it's over. One of the women we would see nearly every day when we went in (her fiance was having treatments) asked me what we were going to do to celebrate. I told her I didn't know what Randall was going to do, but I was going to sleep. :)

I've got a follow up appointment with Dr. Lehr in a couple weeks, and I'll post about that then. My follow up with Dr. Mundy will be Thursday, May 1. I know I'll be getting a CT scan, but I'm not sure it it will be that day or if we'll schedule it. They have to wait a good four weeks for everything that was hit with radiation to calm down. I can attest to that because my lower gums that were feeling pretty good right before treatment started now feel like the teeth were pulled out last week. I'll let everyone know how that appointment goes.

I suspect I'll blog once a week or so until some time in May, but hopefully it will all be good news about how all the side effects are disappearing. I'm looking WAY forward to getting in the kitchen, too, even if I can't eat what I fix. And cross stitching. I haven't done a thing since the treatments started, and I have an owl to do for Randall's birthday which needs to be finished by the end of May.

So for now, I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. Someone eat a steak (I'm craving one, oddly enough) and drink a couple of beers for me, and I'll post in next week and let everyone know how it feels to not be roasted and toasted every day!

In the home stretch....

Knock on wood. If all goes as planned, I'll only have two more treatments after today. YEAH!!!!

Meanwhile, Randall and I (well, mainly Randall; my contribution has been a couple of posts on the message board) have been putting together a cancer support message board for the local area. There are absolutely NO local support group resources for cancer patients and their family/care givers that we can find. So, we hope to have most of this ready to go by next week. When we go for my treatment today we'll take copies of the start page of the website for the folks at Fentress to look at and critique. We're having "business cards" printed up, and once those are done, we'll take them around to the few places in town so they can be included in patient packets. I'm really excited about this project because I know the trouble I went through getting information about stuff here locally.

Anyway, here's the link if you'd like to take a look: http://www.centexcancersupport.org/