October 16 - Today marks 3 weeks since radiation ended and exactly 4 months without a cigarette.

I'm so glad I go back and read my last blog before posting a new one. I totally forgot about looking for the Carnation Instant Breakfast! I am sending a reminder e-mail to work right now so that I can pop over to the other Wegman's tomorrow and continue my search.

I spoke too soon about holding off on the Lidocaine shenanigans. In fact I think it was that very night that I was hurting so I mixed it with the liquid antacid and held it in my mouth for 5 minutes. Holy cow! She was right! Totally numbed everything. Granted it only lasted 30 minutes but it was a blissful 30 minutes.

Some days the liquid Advil works and other days it does not. Yesterday it got me through the day no problem. Today I was falling apart at 2:00 which was only 2.5 hours after my last dose of Advil. I ended up coming home and taking the Roxicet in the middle of the day. The reason being I had promised to take our new Korean Service Engineer shopping at the mall directly after work and that wasn't going to happen if I didn't do something about the pain ASAP.

Today was employee appreciation day at work. All of the managers made breakfast for us lower ladder people. There was french toast, scrambled eggs, omelets, bacon, sausage, min-muffins and cinnamon buns, fruit salad, juice.......<sigh> It all looked and smelled wonderful. It wasn't a total loss for me though, at the end of the breakfast they gave everyone a company jacket. It's REALLY nice!

I actually have one improvement to report although I don't know if it's because things are getting better or if sheer exhaustion is overwhelming me:

Improvements:
- Twice in the past week I actually slept for a solid 6 hours!

No Improvements:
- Throat is still extremely painful
- I'm mostly only able to sleep for 3-4 hours at a time.
- Everything still tastes disgusting.
- Mucusitis on the good side of my tongue.
- My tongue is still swollen and touching the back of my throat, making me gag.
- Diarrhea is still going on.
- I'm still losing weight.
- I'm still using the water pik 4 to 5 times a day to blow the ropey saliva and mucus build-up out of my mouth.
- I'm still not producing spit.
- And even if my coworkers say I'm sounding better every day, I still sound garbled to my own ears.

That's it for now. I have to start thinking of questions for the ENT appointment on Friday.