August 24 - Soooooo, it turns out that I am not experiencing radiation side effects earlier than expected. My problem is that I have thrush. I mentioned to my tech team that I was running a low grade fever last night and that there's something currently going around the office, and how bummed I'm going to be if I get sick on top of having to endure radiation. As soon as they heard the word fever, they whisked me off to the doc, who took one look in my mouth, and whipped out her prescription pad. I guess thrush is common for this type of radiation. It's basically a yeast infection inside your mouth. Yet another little nugget of knowledge that is now permanently imbedded in my brain, much to my dismay. So, I'm swishing and swallowing some special mouth stuff 4x a day for the next two weeks.

Since I had the doctor's attention, I decided to assault her with some other questions that have been building up.

My tongue has started bleeding profusely when I brush my teeth. Why? Turns out this is also the fault of thrush. She told me to stop using my vibrating toothbrush and to switch to a soft toothbrush with a small head.

The capris I wore yesterday seemed looser than they should. I hopped on the scale this morning and I've dropped 4 pounds this week. I immediately had a heart attack. As mentioned yesterday, I'm ingesting as many calories as I can to avoid the dreaded stomach feeding tube! So, I asked what the weight loss would need to be in order for them to wisk me to the hospital and implant the nightmarish thing. The doctor immediately replied that I would need to lose 10 pounds in one week for that to happen. Phew! At least I can stop spazzing out about that and I loved that she had such a concrete answer so readily available!

I don't remember if I mentioned it before but last week the techs would leave the room and the radiation would start. This week the techs leave the room, there's a 2-3 minute wait, and then the radiation starts. I asked the tech team earlier this week what was going on. They said instead of taking pictures twice a week, they were now taking them every day. I asked the doc why that suddenly changed and if I should be worried. She said taking pictures every day is the normal thing to do and she's not sure why the head radiation doc only had me down for 2 days when my treatment first started.

I asked if there was any chance of radiation ending sooner than 6-7 weeks. She said my treatments aren't really fighting anything, they're post surgery to prevent future stuff, so no, the treatment run they are giving me is the standard run for this type of cancer.

On the bright side, she told me my treatments end on 9/25. I now have a date to count down to!

I used the Biotene a couple of times last night. Seems to help but it's hard to suppress the gag reflex because really, it's synthetic spit that I'm putting in my mouth and I can tell!

I tracked my humidifier. It's supposed to be here by next Tuesday. I am eagerly awaiting its arrival.

Okeydoke, I took a half day today. I'm going to go force myself to eat something and then I'm crawling into bed for a nap. It's been a long week.