Day 8 After Radiation

My wife got a call from my oncologist on Wednesday to let us know they weren't going to proceed with the third round of chemo even though my white blood cell count was back up.  He told her that since the chemo and radiation are supposed to work in tandem and I've already stopped my radiation that the chemo was no longer necessary.  I'm glad because I feel like I've been through enough and if it's going to be ineffectual then there's no point in putting me through additional suffering and risk for side effects.  Actually, I'm ecstatic.  So I'm done with treatment.  Woohoo!!

Wednesday night my saliva seemed to return to normal.  I seemed to be producing normal amounts and it wasn't as ropy.  I was pretty excited.  However, the following day, Thursday, my glands returned to overproducing the ropy, slimy substance although the volume did seem less.  The green phlegm I was producing stopped in the afternoon, but I did have coughing fits from an irritation in the back of my throat.  It would happen only every few hours and it goes away after about a half hour.  I also did feel various "dry spots" in my mouth even though there was plenty of saliva throughout.  I don't know if they're actually dry spots or just a dry sensation.

However I was plagued with night sweats again on Wednesday night.  I had to change my t-shirt four times from having been soaked through.  Trying to track down the cause of this it looks like it may be caused by the Fentanyl pain patches I've been using.  The listed side effects I've experienced with these are sweating and uncontrolled muscle twitching.  I initially thought the muscle twitching was me just dozing off, but as I paid more attention to them I noticed they were happening even when I wasn't sleepy.  So yesterday I stopped using the pain patches and went back to Hydrocodone.  The only side effects I experience from Hydrocodone is happiness, positivity and a sense of well being.  Side effects I could live with long term.

Last night my saliva again returned to an almost normal state and I only had one, minor instance of night sweats.  Much better nights sleep.  I think I only woke up once to change my shirt and slept pretty heavy the rest of the time.

Today my saliva, although still somewhat ropy, is a lot more normal.  I haven't experienced any dry spots really and haven't had to carry around a cup to spit out excess saliva in.  I think some of the overproduction of saliva may also be caused by all the dairy I'm consuming.  My formula is dairy based so six cans of that a day is a lot more than I'm used to.

I called the supplier this morning to see if they can switch me to a non-dairy formula.  Apparently they have to contact my nutritionist, she has to discuss my symptoms with me, then she has to contact my primary care doctor who has to write a prescription, then my insurance has to approve it, then and only then can they switch my formula.  Which all sounds really ridiculous since I have to pay for it out-of-pocket anyway.

So I had my wife pick up some non-dairy protein powder and some almond milk from the store.  I'm going to supplement some of my formula with that to at least decrease the amount of dairy I'm consuming to see if that helps until I can get my non-dairy formula.

The pain in my mouth seems better today too.  I ended taking a dose of Hydrocodone around 4:15 PM today after a coughing fit from an irritation in the back of my throat.  Not sure if the Hydrocodone with help with that but I thought I'd give it a try.

Since the pain has decreased in my mouth I'm also trying to drink more orally.  It doesn't hurt too bad it just doesn't taste very good.

It seems like my sense of smell has increased.  I can really smell the clorine in tap water and when I went on a walk to day, the first in a while, the air smelt nasty.  I don't know if it was from the hot asphalt or from automobile exhaust.

I'm also starting to talk again.  I've only been talking for the last few weeks when I absolutely had to.  Most of the time I would communicate with my family members through charades due to the pain.  It's been kind of fun but also frustrating when I couldn't get my point across.

I've been also putting green juice, Emergen-C, and pomegranate juice down my tube.  They had me stop taking anti-oxidants because they didn't want them interfering with the chemo, but now that I'm done with that I can start taking them again to rebuild my body.

Anyway, today was a pretty good day.  I really feel like today I'm moving forward toward feeling good again.  I just need to get my pain level to a point where I can eat again.  Once I can eat again I can get the g-tube removed.  Once that's removed I can start putting some weight back on.