Ok I skipped over all that stuff in the middle that isn’t much fun, because your doctor will spend a lot of time talking about all that “STUFF”. A friend of mine is about to start radiation for throat cancer and asked me a whole lot of questions about that middle stuff, so I figure I get cover my experiences.
SIDE-EFFECT TIME DELAY- The first three weeks of radiation are pretty easy in comparison with the next three months. By the time the fourth week comes up you are thinking “OK this isn’t so bad I can tolerate this.” The treatment and the side effects happen about five weeks apart. At the fourth week you start feeling tired and your throat starts to hurt. You may be on steroids which has it’s own set of side-effects – you will get very emotional. You will probably yap at the kids for not cleaning their rooms, and cry at sappy movies. I think my children really enjoyed seeing me cry at Christmas jewelry commercials. (my daughter just read this and agrees).
By the time you finish the radiation, you will start to think this isn’t very bad- don’t worry it gets worse(1). At the end of radiation, I was thinking about going back to work, my doctor and my wife looked at me like I was out of my mind – they were right I was out of my mind. It was either the steroids or the Oxycodone talking . . . I finished treatment mid-September and wasn’t back at work until mid-November. The truth? I wasn’t full functioning at work until January. Feeling better is just as slow a process as feeling tired.
PAIN- There I said it. Actually there wasn’t much pain. I am at Dana Farber and they were very conscience about managing pain. I thought I was taking a lot of pain med, but they assured me that I was very low or the scale of the amount of pain meds I was taking. My friend told me that the Oxycodone he was on got him a little high, it didn’t affect me that way at all. The liquid was great because I could just pour it down the Stomach peg. I would say I was in a constant state of discomfort, but not pain.
The three main areas of pain were general body ache, throat is on fire when you swallow, and burn when you brush your teeth. I used a Lidocaine mouth rinse before eating and brushing my teeth that really numbed up the whole mouth. I also recommend getting a little kids toothbrush with a smaller bristle head because the brush is softer and you are able to brush teeth when you are unable to open your mouth very much. Personally I used a Whinny the Pooh toothbrush
WEIGHT LOST – It’s going to happen. Your body will take a toll on losing weight. It’s amazing how much energy it takes to lose weight. I lost about 2.5 pounds every week for about 4 months. Yes that is about 40-50 pounds. ( 6 months after getting my Stomach Peg out, I still weigh 175 pounds. Which is why getting as much food as possible into your belly is important.
TIREDNESS – I didn’t want to get out of bed, but I did because I had to put food in my belly at 6:30AM. Then I moved to my comfy chair for my “cans and soups” This became standard operating procedure for the rest of the day, until my son came home from school, where he would try to get me to move around.
PURPOSE OF LIFE – The best and worst thing I did was coach 5th and 6th grade girl’s soccer. It gave me a great purpose to life; however, my coaching skills were well tested. I told you about the steroid issue of high and low emotions. These came out on the soccer sidelines. The big thing I learned is that my girls played soccer for the love of the game. Thank goodness because we weren’t an offense threat.
Love always
Jeff Scott Hoyland
(1) When you are functioning at 25% capacity you don’t notice sliding to 10%. But when you go from 10% to 20 % your think you are on top of the world when you aren’t.
My Friend TOny's wellness visit during the summer of Chemo
