Very soon after the euphoria of finally finishing treatment subsided, the seriousness of my situation was very quick to return. It was such a great feeling to finally be finished with the everyday treatments and I really had not experienced all that much in the way of severe side effects so I imagine that I let my guard down a little and thought I might squeak by and return to normal life relatively quickly. I believe the celebration a bit premature and I am once again humbled by the severity of what my body has been subjected to. I am also extremely grateful that I only received the considerable dosage of radiation to only the left side of my head and neck. I cringe in horror to think that the pain that I feel now would be doubled and on both sides of my throat, mouth and neck. I can, without a doubt, say that last weekend was the most miserable 2-3 day stretch of my entire life and I don't feel like it is getting better as of yet. Everything I read warned me to be ready for a couple weeks of hell after finishing treatment and prior to any significant recovery, and that has definitely been the case thus far. Maybe my body has been able to fight off the effects that normally start plaguing people 3 weeks into treatment and delayed the onset until after I finished, or the cumulative effects have just built up to the point now where I am unable to cope as I could just a week ago.
Overall, there is much more pain now and it has increased substantially over the past week and is very much affecting normal day-to-day activities. Every swallow sends tendrils of intense pain through the left half of my throat and just talking has become something of a struggle. In addition to the throat pain, the existing sores in my mouth have become more painful and have been joined by an ever increasing number of friends that make my days oh-so miserable. Keeping up with my mouth care and water intake and food intake has become a struggle that I am fighting a losing battle with each day. It seems like such an easy thing, to drink water or to rinse my mouth out or to even eat some cantaloupe. I agree that these things SEEM like easy activities, but the fire in my mouth and throat have different ideas about what is easy and what is extremely difficult. I spent most of the weekend not taking my pain pills as I was also dealing with nasty side effects from those pills and I needed some time to work things out. In hindsight, that was probably a bad idea, but I felt it needed to be done. Solid food is becoming more difficult to eat, to the point that Jessica picked me up a whole lot of Ensure at the store today (thank you!). I believe that I will be taking in the majority of my calories in the foreseeable future in liquid form.
Anyway, I think that is about it for right now. I will try to write more in the coming days, and I am super pumped for one thing today and that is the arrival of my newest shirt. It looks like this:
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