The Fourth Week

First of all I can't believe I am actually entering my fourth week of treatment, time fly's when your having fun!!

so where am I, well as Prof Donde announced things would get worse and yep you've guessed it to an extent they have, but a few strange things over the past few days as well??? so, mouth has got very sore, loads of unpleasant ulcers especially in the roof of my mouth that makes eating quite difficult. The good news is I am still eating solid food, of which I can taste a great deal more!! how the hell does that work, I mean a few days ago I could taste bugger all? I have to take my hat of to McDonalds, having gone to the pictures with Carol (saw the Ides of March - well worth it by the way) I really fancied chips, had a real craving for them, anyway, popped into McDonalds, which I probably haven't been to in at least 4 years and ordered up a quarter pounder with cheese meal, and could taste the lot....just goes to show how metallic that food must be, LOL! surprisingly though since then I have had some taste back, even down to chocolate desserts; potatoes seems to be a good thing as does some salad stuff like lettuce, cucumber, etc, also Homous (think thats how you spell it) and some nutty breads work. I think its just a case of seeing what works and getting it into your stomach ASAP, so less chewing...

One problem I am now having is with toothpaste, current one is killing me, really burns my mouth so got to go a test drive some different one's!! Getting more headaches, but I think it's because I am not drinking enough, although water is coming back on the menu, so maybe it will be easier

Anyway, I am now I think 17 days today, the halfway point so just need to push on, Carol is coming to the oncology centre with me this week, I think that is an experience for her that she really shouldn't be put through, she came down and saw the IMRT machine, by the way I found out what that means - Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy, looking it up on gooogle I found it means that the intensity of the radiation in IMRT can be changed during treatment to spare more adjoining normal tissue than is spared during conventional radiation therapy. Because of this an increased dose of radiation can be delivered to the tumor using IMRT. Intensity modulated radiation therapy is a type of conformal radiation, which shapes radiation beams to closely approximate the shape of the tumor - pretty cool eh?