Almost to radiation therapy


January 26, 2010: I haven’t written anything down for almost a month. The side effects of my chemotherapy seem to be getting worse the further along I get into treatment. I’m having trouble sleeping at night, so the doctor prescribed some sleeping pills for me. I am also experiencing more pain, but my swelling is going down dramatically.  I have officially been back on a solid food diet for 3 weeks! YAY! This is a big deal. Try having a liquid diet for over 2 months, then the appreciation for solid foods will come. 

I have been spending more and more time in La Crosse; I want to live my life as normally as possible until I start radiation therapy.  I will begin my treatments the first week in February.  All in all chemotherapy has not been that bad. The occasional nausea, constant fatigue and the hair loss are the only major side effects. They have some good medications for the nausea, so I am controlling that fairly well. 

My last chemo session is scheduled to be concurrent with a radiation treatment. I imagine this won’t be much fun. I did some research on radiation therapy for the head/neck and people say it is the worst place of the body to have radiation treatments done on. Here’s to hoping it isn’t that terrible! J When I’m having treatment I will be living in Rochester, MN at the Hope Lodge. Radiation therapy is 5 times a week for 6 weeks. 30 treatments is going to be a lot. I'm trying not to think about it, but I can't help but wonder what that will be like…

The other night my girls took me out for dinner and dessert. We looked a little overdressed for the Olive Garden and Applebees, but it was fun!  Had dinner at the Olive Garden and dessert at Applebees. Perfect combination. Not very healthy I suppose, but the Radiation Oncologist did suggest I try to put on some weight before starting treatment.  If I lose a certain perentage of weight during radiation therapy I will have to have a feeding tube. I would like to avoid that for sure. I've lost weight from the chemo and liquid diet, but I'm trying to put it back on so I have more leigh way over the 6 weeks of radiation.

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