Blah!

We have officially less than one week until I am finished!  Only 4 more treatments and I can ring my bell and move on with my life.  I am really starting to drag these last few days and I can only imagine that it is going to get worse.  Complete lack of energy and where I do have feeling on my upper shoulder/neck/head area, the radiation is seriously burning my skin.  It also severely stiffens the muscles of my neck, so movement is a little more difficult and slow.  My radiation treatment shortened by about 5 minutes this morning when they cut out the final electron step.  I am also not sure if it is from the platelet loss or one of the many other aspects of my blood that are out of whack, but I am cold all the time.  It actually is kind of a useful trait to have here in Houston right now since we are approaching solar surface temperatures these days.
I am still finding it increasingly difficult to make myself eat.  Something about the mechanics of it are bothering me, but I can' exactly tell what it is.  Maybe it is because my tongue is swollen and hurts a bit when I have to use it to move food around to chew it.  Whatever it is, it is becoming more difficult.  I am still eating, though and hopefully things will start getting better in a couple of weeks.  Jessica is doing an awesome job of making things that are easy for me to eat and that don't have anything too offensive in it so I can keep getting something in me every night.  It also gets harder and harder every day to force down the water and I have started trying to add in some decaffeinated iced tea so that I have at least something else that I can drink.  Intensely sweet things now taste horrific to me.  I tried a sip of root beer the other day and it was disgusting.  That and cream cheese icing are the two things thus far that the taste has changed for the worse.  I can still power down a chocolate milk shake like a champ, so there is still hope.
My picture today is of a hairless bear and gives some insight in to how I feel out in the everyday world without my beard.  Just as bears should be covered with a magnificent coat of hair, so too should my face be covered with a spectacular display of hairy goodness.  Without it, we both look out of place, disturbing and completely unnatural.