Week 3 - Day 13

I have now done 13 radiotherapy sessions. I must admit, I’m not too comfortable pausing on this number for the weekend after my initial diagnosis took place on Friday 13^th but given I don’t have a choice I am trying not to think about it!

Only two more sessions until I get to the much-anticipated halfway mark when I can start counting down to the end. When I get to the ‘end’ I will, of course, feel incredibly relieved, but as I’ve said in previous posts, the end is not actually the end. The end of treatment simply means no more radiotherapy sessions. In reality, what happens is that the radiotherapy will keep cooking my throat for a few more weeks (or possibly months), so it will get worse before it gets better.

Unlike surgery, where recovery was pretty linear and I got a little better each day, I am finding with radiation that every day is different and even within each day things seem to go up and down. I spent most of yesterday afternoon in a complete daze on the sofa, drifting in and out of slumber. At that moment, I assumed that this meant the fatigue was kicking in and the next month or so would be similar every day. But I woke up today with a new lease of life, went through my treatment without any issues and when I came home I met a good friend for a lovely long dog walk in the sunshine. It was glorious and I didn’t need a nap the whole day.

Mask music of choice today was Salt n Pepa - I went right back to the 80s! 'Push It', 'Shake Your Thang' and 'Let's Talk About Sex' were all played while I was bolted down, and it took me back to some amazing days in Munich many, many years ago! Happy memories!

Unfortunately, the lovely afternoon quickly turned sour as dinnertime approached. My taste buds were last seen leaving the hospital sometime around 10am this morning, and my sense of taste is now sadly disappearing. I can only taste certain things at certain times, like a little salt on a chip, or the partial sweetness of ice cream. Often, I think I can taste something and my mouth starts doing somersaults in delight, but after about three mouthfuls all I can taste is disappointment – the taste evaporates completely and I feel like I am chewing on cardboard.

We decided to order takeaway tonight. In hindsight I should probably have opted for a something like a Pad Thai – nice slippery noodles with minimal chewing which would have been reasonably manageable. For reasons I can’t recall, we opted for a more generic takeaway. I ordered chicken breast with cheesy chips, thinking that the chicken would melt in the mouth and the chips would be soft and easy to eat. I managed a few mouthfuls of the chicken, but sadly could not taste it. This evening’s learning has been that chewing meat you cannot taste is quite an unpleasant thing to do, because you have the texture but not the flavour. It started to turn my stomach so I tried the chips instead. They were also too thick to go down, even dipped in barbecue sauce and washed down with lots of water.

At this point I was feeling very frustrated so I gave up. And then I did what any sane human being does when you can’t taste your dinner but you need to somehow get calories in - I got the ice cream out! Time to buy shares in Hagen Daazs everyone!

After dinner, I tried to watch a movie (The Batman) but slept through more of it than I actually watched, so I gave up before the end (there’s a theme here….) and took myself off to bed. At least there’s no radiotherapy tomorrow (although I am very keen to get number 14 done so I’m not hovering on 13 for too long!).