heh. I'm actually amazed I'm not having more hot flashes considering I'm also taking Tamoxifen as followup therapy for the breast cancer and it, in combination with the chemotherapy I had, is supposed to throw me into menopause (but so far my ovaries aren't listening and are regular as clockwork though they did stop for a few months after chemo). I'm sure it's just down the road though.....

As an update on the physical therapy, I've been going for almost a month now, once or twice a week (depending on what I can schedule in). It is VERY painful at times, especialy the work she does around the scar from my neck dissection and my shoulders and the work she does on my mouth and cheeks. The main obvious sign of healing is that since radiation, the area of skin around my mouth and the cheek near the mouth had some nerve problems where if I touched my skin (for example held my chin in my hand), I would get a "pins and needles" feeling as if something numb was waking up. It was very annoying, espceially since chin in hand is a common position for me when I'm reading something online (something I do a lot of since I teach online).

That is totally gone. Whatever was causing that, I now seem to have total sensation back in that entire area. And in fact the whole way I am holding my mouth seems much more normal and relaxed--I think I had been kind of tightening my lips and clenching my teeth more--maybe a habit acquired during radiation. My smile, for the first time, seems to be the smile I had before radiation too--it's like I've gotten some fine muscle control back around there.

My neck and shoulders are also slowly feeling looser (I actually didn't realize how tight it was when I went to her). She also has been working on the back of my head as she says that is really tight--haven't noticed too much difference there though. But I can believe it was tight after being held down in that mask!

Also my cheeks are a little looser inside my mouth--I can even "puff them out" just a little which I couldn't do at all before! This is going to help the dentist do his work I hope (I have a dental appt. today) And one day she did this inner mouth massage where she just pressed on this place near the jaw joint and I had a big gush of saliva about 1/2 an hour later on the right side (which is where I should still have a partially functioning parotid gland).

As far as loosening up my jaw from the trismus, the work she does always has it looser by the end than it was at the beginning but it seems to tighten right back up again--this also seems to happen with the therabite, which I still use daily too. I'm not sure how much looser I can get this jaw permanently. But it's only been a month of the physical therapy and I'm still trying.....

Altogether I'd say so far the results have been productive.