Tuesday, August 16, 2011

One More Day

Well, according to the Ironwood peeps, I only have one more session! I was originally scheduled for 36 treatments, but somewhere along the line that got changed to 35, so today was my second to last treatment. Bad news is I can't celebrate properly! Normally such good news requires a trip to a nice restaurant for some great food, but that's not in the cards. No big deal. Soon enough I'll be able to chow down proper-like.

The last couple of days have been rough. Very tired, very sore. I actually had to crack out the morphine a couple of times yesterday. At least the nausea/heartburn went away, for the most part. Once I'm done with my treatments though, it's going to be about two weeks and then I should be working back to normal. Well, the "new normal" as they say. Nothing is really going to be the same as it was, but that's ok. I'm hoping that my brilliant healing powers will even bring back my sense of taste sooner than expected.

Something came up the other day and I thought I'd address it here. My daughter asked me if I felt any different, felt any of the effects right after the radiation session. The answer is no. You don't feel the radiation at all. It's like getting an x-ray. You also don't really feel any of the effects later. They just sort of creep up on you and are just 'there'. Which is why it's difficult to discern which treatment is causing the side effects. I have to rely on what I've read and what the doctors tell me to determine which is causing what issue, the chemo or the radiation, and often I'm surprised to find out it wasn't the way I thought it was. The taste bud issues, I thought, were the result of the radiation passing through my tongue and killing my taste buds, but apparently it's the chemo killing them off. Which also makes it strange that I still have a great sense of smell. I would have though that since the two were kind of linked in the way the brain works, that the two would be somewhat equally affected by the chemo. Apparently not.

Welp, this time tomorrow there's going to be a party in my pants!

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