Treatments #13,14,15,16
The bank holiday weekend came like a cold shower in a heatwave. Friday's treatment out of the way, and then nothing for 3 days! The relief is palpable, as every treatment up to now has seen an escalation in side-effects or something new crop up to blight my daily routine.
It's not all good news, as now I have to carefully choose what textures I can eat, so Holland's pies are now consigned to the freezer to be re introduced at a time in the future. Soup, toast, mash potato, rice pudding, are an indication of what is not uncomfortable, or even painful to eat. Even worse than this is the lack of flavour to most foods. I have a vegan friend and we talked about the 'umami' flavour, the so-called 'fifth taste' that makes savoury food so delicious. This is observed in foods like marmite, soy sauce, stewed meat, stock cubes, and others. This is what I am missing most. Salt and bitter have gone and I feel so sad 
Anyway the weekend was good. My daughter stayed with us for a few days, and on Saturday we attended a barbecue at the outlaws' where I managed to eat some burned meat, but could only taste the sausages. I volunteered as designated driver and found bitter lemon vaguely palatable while the wife got semi-mortal on red wine and sangria.
Sunday I had a mad one, went to B&Q to buy sand and cement and decided to rebuild the retaining wall now exposed by the removal of the garage. And Monday. And Tuesday. I surprised myself with my energy levels as prior to this I had felt no desire to do anything too lively.
Noticeable throughout the weekend was the fact that no further deterioration in my mouth has taken place. I have the oromorph but have had no compunction to use anything but paracetamol for a week. So that's good. I seem to have reached some sort of plateau where this is concerned. Dietician seems reasonably convinced that my throat will get worse sometime, but am celebrating my good fortune(ha ha) with a beer tonight.
I have begun to lose some hair around the back of my neck and the jaw on the same side as the RT happens, but I can't see it, so it's not bothering me.
The skin on my neck and jaw is beginning to feel a little tender, too, and is noticeably redder. Slathering up with E45 now in anticipation of soreness who knows when...
Clinic appointment with the oncologist today, tells me I'm doing as well as expected and offers me morphine patches which I have declined in the light of my non-need of the oral stuff.
Cottage pie for tea tonight, crap telly, and researching how to build a garage from scratch by watching youtube.
Wish me luck
