Howdy folks,
I've been working in coming up with a clever story for this week, but unfortunately, it has escaped me -- so, this week, I'll just give you a quick update on what's going on.
As you know from previous posts, I finished up my radiation treatments on October 6, and I'm now in my 6 week "period of rest" -- so I have no treatment, radiation, chemo, or otherwise underway right now. The plan is to allow my body to recover from the damage caused by the radiation and then we rescan/re-biopsy, and determine where to go from here. All of that, as you'll remember, is scheduled for late November, around the Thanksgiving timeframe.
The past couple of weeks have been rough -- during the last week of radiation and the week or so after, I was taking a fair bit of pain medication (hillbilly heroin, as it's called) which pretty much left me a bit of a zombie. The good news about that is my insomnia is completely cured -- a result of getting all the steroids out of my system, and being sedated a bit. The corresponding bad news, of course, is that it has left me sitting in my chair with a bit of drool on my bottom lip from time to time. ;-} I'm starting to reduce the pain meds gradually, so I think that's a good sign that the inflammation is starting to go improve.
Swallowing continues to be tough -- I was hopeful that it would improve in a linear sort of fashion from day to day after radiation stopped. Unfortunately, that's not really what's been happening. As the doctor predicted, I have good days and bad. At this point, the not-so-good days appear to outnumber the good days by a long shot, but there are fewer truly bad days, so I think we're making progress. Still, it gets a bit frustrating when I seem to have taken a big step backwards from one day to the next. Yesterday morning I awoke and was unable to swallow even liquids -- which is both scary, and somewhat inconvenient. The doc still maintains that this is normal, and by noon, I'd managed to loosen things up enough to eat lunch. More good news is that my voice is almost back to normal -- I'm still a little croaky in the morning, but compared to last week when I had periods where I couldn't talk above a whisper, I'm worlds better.
Anyway, enough of the gory details this week! Thank you all for your interest and the emails, txts and facebooks. If I haven't responded to you, please don't be offended -- I'm either drooling, or buried under a pile of other emails -- but I promise I'll respond, and every bit of encouragement is appreciated.
Take care, and much love to you all,
James
The past couple of weeks have been rough -- during the last week of radiation and the week or so after, I was taking a fair bit of pain medication (hillbilly heroin, as it's called) which pretty much left me a bit of a zombie. The good news about that is my insomnia is completely cured -- a result of getting all the steroids out of my system, and being sedated a bit. The corresponding bad news, of course, is that it has left me sitting in my chair with a bit of drool on my bottom lip from time to time. ;-} I'm starting to reduce the pain meds gradually, so I think that's a good sign that the inflammation is starting to go improve.
Swallowing continues to be tough -- I was hopeful that it would improve in a linear sort of fashion from day to day after radiation stopped. Unfortunately, that's not really what's been happening. As the doctor predicted, I have good days and bad. At this point, the not-so-good days appear to outnumber the good days by a long shot, but there are fewer truly bad days, so I think we're making progress. Still, it gets a bit frustrating when I seem to have taken a big step backwards from one day to the next. Yesterday morning I awoke and was unable to swallow even liquids -- which is both scary, and somewhat inconvenient. The doc still maintains that this is normal, and by noon, I'd managed to loosen things up enough to eat lunch. More good news is that my voice is almost back to normal -- I'm still a little croaky in the morning, but compared to last week when I had periods where I couldn't talk above a whisper, I'm worlds better.
Anyway, enough of the gory details this week! Thank you all for your interest and the emails, txts and facebooks. If I haven't responded to you, please don't be offended -- I'm either drooling, or buried under a pile of other emails -- but I promise I'll respond, and every bit of encouragement is appreciated.
Take care, and much love to you all,
James
Just keep up the fight, my dear. As you say, "This too shall pass". Remember my favorite quote, “Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, "I will try again tomorrow.”
ReplyDeleteBe strong, we love you.
ReplyDeleteSounds like things are still moving in a positive direction. Slow moving. But moving :) keep your chin up...and a hankie close by for drool....and you'll get there. Love you :)
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