November 23 - Thanksgiving, the holiday that highlights the giving of thanks. :-)

I received numerous Turkey Day wishes yesterday, three of which stood out from the rest. Three different friends were specifically thankful to have ME as a friend. How *bleeping* sweet is that? Kind of hard to continue being a Grumpy Gus, which has been my operating mode all week,  after getting that extra special love.  <3

So, keeping in line with reporting on my health (mostly) in this blog, I paid extra attention today to the improvements that have happened over the past couple of months. Instead of the short and sweet bullet list, I'm going to expand on the points a little:

- I'm really glad the ropey, mucusy saliva crap is pretty much done. It was really gross having to wipe it out with a tissue constantly. And sometimes when I went to talk, my mouth would be all gummed shut and I'd blow a "spit" bubble upon trying to speak. It was SO unattractive. So while I'm still not producing enough spit to masticate and swallow food, I'm supremely happy that the goopy stuff is gone.

- The range of motion in my neck is vastly improved. Looking up is still a little stiff but all the other directions are pretty much back to norm.

- I think the trach scar has faded even more over the past few weeks. I was a little worried that wearing necklaces would draw attention to it but it seems like it will be a non-issue at the rate it's fading.

- It feels so good to be able to close my mouth all the way. I actually ate a baby carrot the other day! Immediately afterwards I had to chug water, ended up choking on a piece, and had to go do the water pik to get the rest of it unglued from the roof of my mouth. But all of that aside, I got to crunch on something! Yay! (And based on all that, I think you can see why I only ate one.)

- I don't even think about the scar on my wrist anymore. I think the car accident when I was 14 helps with that. I already have some serious scars on both legs that I learned to live with so what's one more?

- More and more often I'm sleeping 6-7 hours in a row. Getting some decent sleep helps with mood and energy levels, huge!

- The pain when swallowing is definitely gone. I remember when it was so bad, it was making me cry just to drink water. Heck, even before the surgery, the tumor itself was painful and I had already lost 10 pounds before going to the hospital because the pain curbed my eating.

- I think the mucusitis on my tongue is starting to fade! Maybe. I need to look at it again once the thrush has been banished but I'm pretty sure I noticed an improvement a couple of days ago.

Okay, that's all the good stuff. I'd like to leave it there but it seems like there should be full disclosure.

- The thrush is definitely back in full force. This morning I woke up and my entire tongue was swollen to the point of not being able to talk. The gagging is worse than ever. The mucusitis is "burning" more so than before. AND my tongue started bleeding when I was brushing my teeth this morning which hasn't happened for a while now. I hate thrush. What's worse is that I've been on the meds for 5 days. I'd be fine if I didn't see any improvement yet but things aren't supposed to get worse while on the meds you're taking to fix things, is it?! I wonder if the fact that I'm allergic to a bunch of different antibiotics is making it difficult to prescribe me something that works on clearing this up. I'll have to ask at my appointment on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, taking the 1/2 teaspoon as compared to the full teaspoon definitely did the trick as far as avoiding the nausea/vomiting. So, that's to the good. To the bad, I had been doing well cutting back on the Roxicet and it was going to be no problem making it last until my appointment on Tuesday (which is what Nurse Jane told me I had to do). The full blown thrush made for a very bad day today and now I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the Roxicet lasts until Tuesday. And hopefully she'll refill it! I think I might be getting cut off soon! (I guess I can always drive slowly around my neighborhood with my car alarm going off to let the local drug dealer know that I need to score. And the poker guys didn't think that info would come in handy. Silly them.)

- I've been doing the milkshake every other day. Driving to Micky D's on a daily basis was asking too much of myself. Of course that's probably why I'm still losing weight. Scale today said 128.0. I'm still sucking down smoothies and Carnation drinks too. Because of the the food diary, I had to calculate the calories in the smoothies I've been making. It turns out they only range between 250-300 calories each. So, I'm still working on imbibing as much as possible, it just isn't going fantastically well. I've also tried some other food-foods. Please note the word 'tried', this means I took one, sometimes two bites before giving up. I mentioned the baby carrot above, I also tried some Wegman's homestyle mac and cheese, steamed rice with butter, chicken and rice soup, Mickey D's cheeseburger, fries and apple pie (I couldn't help it, it smelled fantastic!), a sliced and peeled apple with caramel sauce, fresh baked croissant with seafood dip......none of them went over well. They either tasted absolutely disgusting (Mickey D's french fries, much to my horror!) or it was too much trying to chew and swallow them. And after the choking incident yesterday with the carrot, I'm sticking to all liquids again for a while.

- I noticed in the shower today that my hair is still falling out a lot more than normal. I think I read that it's one of the side effects of the thrush medicine. Thank god I have a ton of hair to begin with, otherwise things would be looking pretty ratty right about now.


That's all I have for now. I will report back in after the doc on Tuesday, or maybe after the dentist on Wednesday. It will be good to see how my teeth are doing since radiation can cause you to lose them!