Friday’s zap saw me to the halfway stage of radiotherapy!!! A big milestone and now means I’m closer to the end of therapy than I am to the start!!
Got to admit this week has been hard going! The loss of taste combined with my throat and mouth getting really sore have resulted in loss of appetite and feeling pretty grotty. My day is now a routine of mouthwashes, pain killers, throat exercises, trying to eat as much calorie packed food as possible and then repeating. I’m trying to keep calorie and protein intake up to maintain my Adonis like physique, so porridge or scrambled eggs laced with double cream, for breakfast, more egg based fodder for lunch and something equally calorie packed that is easy to chew for supper. My amazing wife is doing a great job in keeping me fed and watered with stuff I can actually eat without my eyes watering in too much pain every time I swallow.
I’m sleeping pretty badly too, with a combination of throat pain and thick salvia making it difficult to get back to sleep if I wake up in the night. The stuff that I try and spit out of my mouth first thing in the morning could be bottled and sold as wallpaper paste.
The good thing is that I’m still here, able to get up in the mornings and enjoy time with the family, the therapists are all happy with progress and what I’m going through is as expected. I’m still staying positive and looking forward to putting this all behind me.
Back to my favoured analogy, the war is progressing as planned, the enemy is putting up a fight and we’ve sustained some collateral damage, but we can see the enemy is weakening. We’re starting to see some of the troops getting battle fatigue but the morale of the company is generally good, which is carrying those on a low ebb through.
This week it has dawned on me that I’m not as bulletproof as I thought I was, I’ve taken a few hits but I’m definitely not going down!!
