End of August update

Another update for another month. :)

Saw Dr. Mundy today for my late August follow-up.

He poked around and prodded and asked me a few questions and said everything looks good. Good news, of course!

Anyway, he has scheduled my second and final (for this year, we hope!) CT scan for October 21. I'll see him again on October 28 for the reading and what should be the last follow-up appointment for the year unless the CT scan shows something. Also, I've rescheduled my appointment with Dr. Holland since it was for October 16, and I know he will want to see the scan results. So I see him on October 30.

That means I should be good to go until nearly Halloween.

Everything else is cruising right along. My mouth is still very, very dry (Dr. Mundy seems to think that will be permanent; Dr. Holland seems to think there will be some improvement over time), but I can work around a lot of that. The swallowing is no longer painful, and that was the real problem. My weight has stabilized now, too. There's a five pound window, basically, that I swing in...just depends on the time of day I step on the scale and how much water I've had (or Blue Bell ice cream *g*).

Fatigue is still an issue, but I knew it would be. Dr. Mundy mentioned today that a person generally doesn't start to see much improvement there until about six months after the treatments stop. That means that I have until October. Course, that's the soonest to expect it, and I doubt I'll meet that timeframe. I figure it will be spring, really, but I'm managing to cope though it's still really easy to over do it because I don't know I've wiped myself out until I've sat down for a couple of hours. I did that last week polishing furniture, and had four or five days where I couldn't do a thing because I was just exhausted. I've never been worth a damn when it comes to pacing myself, so it's not surprising.

Anyway, that's where we are. The next big "test" will come at the end of October. That will be the 6th month since radiation stopped, and we know the biggest danger of return for this type of cancer is in the first year. I expect I'll be blessed with a good case of nerves about then.

Everyone have a safe and wonderful Labor Day!