First week of radiation treatments done

Cross Cancer appointments

I had a total of 7 radiation treatments over the last week and a bit. I started on Thursday August 25, 2016. Jeff took the day off so he could take me to my first appointment. Since he is at the Cross Cancer Institute very often for work, he knows his way around the whole place. It helped since he knew where we had to go.

As I mentioned before, when you first enter the Institute you have to present your red Cross Cancer card at the reception desk. You get a sheet with all of the appointments for that day. That includes times, what is going to be done and room numbers. Then its off to the first appointment of the day. I take my sheet from appointment to appointment.

My radiation is usually my last appointment of the day. When I get to the radiation unit, I leave my paper, go change and sit in the waiting room until it is my turn.

Radiation Treatments

Every time I go, I put on a hospital gown, sit and wait. Then I am led into the radiation room. I am placed onto a table and my shell is bolted to the table. The radiation technicians make sure I am positioned perfectly, so the machine will give me the radiation exactly where the doctor wants it to go.

Everyone leaves the room and an X-ray is taken of my position to ensure even more that I am in the right position. The technicians can move the table I am laying on, from outside the room to align me 100%. The actual radiation starts once this is done.

The machine goes around me twice, completely. I can not really feel anything while the radiation is happening. Can’t feel the rays or any heat or anything like that. When this finished, I am done for the day. I get released from the shell, and off I go until the next day. That is repeated every day, Monday to Friday (unless its a holiday).

Amazing Staff and First Sign of Side effects

The staff is absolutely amazing at the unit that I have to go to. Every day as I am walking in they ask me how I am feeling and if I am having any side effects yet from the radiation. They are very good at giving me the best ways of dealing with all of the side effects. They answer my questions, well at least the ones I remember.

About 3 weeks before I started having radiation I had a rash on my neck right in the area that would be radiated. I was given a cortisone cream to hopefully get rid of the rash before radiation starts. It helped like a charm but a week after it was gone it was starting to come back again. By this time I had already started radiation. I am not allowed to put anything on my neck so that it doesn’t interfere with anything the doctors are doing at the cross. That was a little though to deal with for the first week. Especially after every treatment my neck would get super itchy. I tried not to scratch too much to make it even worse. Luckily, the rash went away all on its own.

Taste issues

The first couple of days I was not feeling anything yet. No side effects and as I said I can’t really feel anything while getting the radiation. The first weekend, so after 2 treatments, I thought that maybe my mouth was getting a little bit more dry. It was getting harder to swallow and stuff, but I knew it was a possible side effect, I thought it might be in my head. Now another week out from that I know that it was definitely starting at that point.

This past week was the first time I was exposed to the full dose of radiation exposure, meaning 5 treatments. Around Friday night I was starting notices really big changes. Drinking water was starting to become a little unpleasant. It started tasting like metal. Over the last 48 hours those side effects have started to become even more and more profound. Water is even less enjoyable, that goes for just about anything now.

It seems like my taste buds towards the back of my mouth are not shot yet. I have to almost force myself to finish my food, its just not easy to really enjoy something when it doesn’t taste like anything or tastes like metal. The problem for me is, the radiation is going around my whole head twice. This means both sides are effected. There is nowhere even some of my taste buds would be protected.

Dry mouth issues

As to the side effect of getting a dryer mouth, I can say I am definitely at that stage. My mouth itself is actually not the worst part, its more so my throat. You may know the sensation when you are sick with a cold and you are mouth breathing; your throat gets very dry and it’s harder to swallow. Well, that’s the sensation I have all the time now. It’s either that or a feeling of having something stuck in my throat that I can’t get down.

I have gotten a lot of things to help me with all of it. It’s definitely manageable for now. I am using a different toothpaste I have a moisturizing mouth spray, gel, moisturizing lozenges, and mouthwash. My oral hygiene routine has definitely picked up a notch or two. I’ve  added multiple rises and things like that to that routine.

I was supposed to get my fluoride trays this week, but there was a hiccup at the dental office. My impressions were never sent, hence, I didn’t get them this week. When I showed up at the dental clinic, the lady was super nice and apologized so many times. She gave me some rinses and fluoride lollipops to use in the meantime. I desperately need to protect my teeth as much as possible.

All of that being said, I do worry a little about what will happen as I continue on through this journey. This was only treatment 7 out of 30, so what is going to happen at the end of the treatments? How will I feel then? Will I even want to eat at all?

Worries for the future

Which, if it does get even worse, and I don’t feel like eating at all, what is going to happen then? This week I went to my first weekly clinic visits. This means, that before I get my treatment I go to see some people of my medical team. That team has now grown a little.

First I met with Dr. J. who examined me a little to see how the skin looks around where they are radiating. He also asks about how my throat is feeling and basically talking about all the possible side effects. This was all on Wednesday, so at that point I felt great still without any side effects.

He went over everything with me again. Things I may or may not be experiencing over the next 5 weeks and such. After he was done, I met with a dietician and a speech language pathologist.

I am wearing scarves everywhere I go now to protect the area that is getting the radiation. This will help to keep the irritation down since it is protected from sunlight and wind. Since my radiation goes from just under my ear to my chest, I have started wearing my scarf like this right after my radiations. Definitely get some stares from people.

Speech Language Pathology

My speech language pathologist is a very lovely lady (A.). She explained to me what kind of things they usually do with people who have oral cancer and also explained to me that these exercises might not work for me since it isn’t clinically proven to do anything at all. She was willing to meet with me again however. That way, she could give me some more information to be a bit more proactive and maybe avoid some of the side effects.

One of the first things I mentioned to her was how I always have the sensation as if something is stuck in my throat and that I had it since surgery. Again, she said that people with thyroid cancer are a very under served population group. There is not a lot of research done as to what they can do to prevent or cure these kinds of things. I met up with her on Friday and she gave me 3 exercises to do to improve some of the muscles strength in my throat. Every once in a while I am very aware about how I swallow. It reminds me to do the exercises to strengthen everything.

Dietician

This was something that I was not expecting. Well, we went through the whole “How is your diet right now? Here is the Canadian Food Guide. Oh yea and you need to eat 140g of protein a day.” Just to put that into perspective, 1 egg = 6 g of protein. 1 chicken breast = 26g of protein. 140/26=5. That is five whole chicken breasts a day.

There is absolutely no way of eating that much protein in a day. At least not for me. This is the equivalent to what a body builder would eat when doing mass bulking up. My only option at this point is to add protein powder in the form of shakes, smoothies and baking to my daily routine. My problem with that however is that its smells like baby formula and is a little hard to get down for me.

The reason why I need so much protein, is that while I am going through radiation, my body needs a ton of protein because it tries to heal itself. Basically all that radiation does is break apart the DNA in all the cells. Healthy cells can heal themselves with the help of these proteins, cancerous cells however can’t do that. So in order to allow my healthy cells to stay healthy I need to fuel my body to help it. If I don’t do that, my body is going to just take the protein from my muscles. Since I don’t really have a lot of muscles to begin with I need to avoid this from happening.

Emotions

With all of that going on I would be lying if I said I was doing well emotionally. For the last few treatments I was feeling very tired after. It would usually hit me around 1-2 hours after the treatment. I would be totally exhausted to the point where I could barely stay awake. My body just fell asleep on the couch. However, that wasn’t the only thing that I noticed. I am much closer to tears over the last few days and just overall a little more grouchy.

Walking with a friend

As some of you know a dear friend was diagnosed with cancer just a few weeks ago. She had a major setback almost 2 weeks ago now. What many of you don’t know is that we are actually fighting the same type of cancer It is called neuroendocrine carcinoma. The only difference between us is the location of where it first originated.

For me it was very contained to my thyroid and lymph nodes, however it hadn’t spread anywhere else. For my friend it unfortunately originated somewhere around the pancreas and has spread to her liver. When we met the first time after she was diagnosed, we just hugged and cried. All she said to me was “we are in this together”. And she couldn’t be more right.

So many people were praying for me as I started my journey and continue to do so today. Many of these people are now also praying for her. One of the days her blood work had gotten so well that the doctors told her that they had no idea how this was even possible. She told them that about 300 people were praying for her. I just want to use this opportunity to tell her it is so many more than just 300. There is an army of prayers behind you and that’s exactly were we will continue to stay.

Sharing the burden

Throughout this whole experience I have seen so many people fighting their own cancer. These are people in my circle of friends and acquaintances, the people I see every time I go to the cross. I can’t tell you how fortunate I feel, that my cancer hasn’t spread and I get the chance to fight this so ‘early’ on. There was nothing that could prepare me for how much it might effect me having someone close to me be diagnosed with cancer.

I was talking to another friend recently. As we get older the number of people we know that are going to be diagnosed with all kinds of diseases and maybe even pass away from them is only going to increase. Which is true but yet so scary. It makes you appreciate life so much more. I am so thankful to God that he has allowed me fight for it with everything there is, western medicine as well as alternative medicine.

Thank you again to everyone who is praying for me. I would ask you today that you would keep my friend D. in your prayers as well.

Sprinkled through this post are a couple pictures of our pre treatment photo shoot we did with the amazingly talented Melissa Hunt. (You can find her on Facebook and Instagram)