A Quick Update!

I've been a little delinquent in posting updates lately. Part of the reason is that I really haven't known what to post. However, I know there are folks that are curious for any update with my situation, no matter how brief.

Current Treatment

As I talked about in my previous post, I have started receiving radiation therapy. This treatment takes place daily (5 days per week) and each session is about 10 minutes. I do this every morning at 7am prior to starting my day at work. On top of the radiation, I receive a weekly maintenance dose of chemotherapy. This treatment takes about 4-5 hours every Wednesday. This Monday marks the start of my 4th week of radiotherapy, scheduled for a total of 7 weeks.

Side Effects

I was fortunate during chemotherapy that my body tolerated the treatment pretty well and I didn't experience much in the way of side effects. However, radiotherapy is very different and there is no escaping the side effects of being "blasted" with radiation daily. Since the area being treated is my neck and nasopharynx (think the back of the roof of my both / throat), the side effects are localized mostly there.

Lack of taste is probably one of worst side effects for someone like me who loves food. It isn't even necessarily no taste, but just completely messed up taste and it seems to change daily. As an example, this weekend water started to taste like nothing but salt. I've been drinking Gatorade instead of regular water, while it doesn't taste much better, it doesn't taste like a jar of salt.

Another side affect is the inability to produce saliva. I'll just let you guess about the implications of this one rather than get into descriptions. Additionally, most of the surfaces of my mouth are sore which makes swallowing solids more and more difficult. At this point my diet is mostly soft foods and liquids.

Constant nausea is pretty common, although I have quite a few anti-nausea medicines. I've pretty much resigned to at least some mild nausea nearly at all times and the medicine tends to keep it from getting out of control.

So what about my hair, I think this is the question I get asked the most. This is kind of a multipart answer. The chemotherapy caused some hair loss on my head, but I would classify this as hair thinning. Having pretty thick hair is a blessing in this case. The radiation focused on my neck caused portions of my beard to fall out completely. Since it looked such a mess, I have shaved my beard off for the first time in about 9 or 10 years. I have to say, it was a slight shock to see my face under the beard for the first time in such a long time.

What's Next

So, I have 4 more weeks of radiation and chemotherapy. I'll continue to push through this until the doctors give me a clean bill of health.