Is today. Last chemo was last Tues. I have been dehydrated most of the time. Tries patch last week become very ill so stopped. Went to slower pump which has helped nausea. Still not sleeping, sore throat, sore lose stool but it could be much wose. How long does sleep stay away? How long till feel like trying to eat?

If you are like most of us things may get a tad worse for the next 2 weeks and then one day you will wake up and feel just a tad better but something will tell you that the worst is over. I called that walking out of my dark tunnel. I walked out in my 3rd week post Tx. I still had some bad days but slowly the good days outnumbered the bad days until finally no more bad days.

Taste and saliva improvement, which I think go hand and hand, will take a very long time to return to anything like pre Tx normal. I started to see some improvements my 4th month post Tx and by my 15th month I was satisfied that if I didn't improve anymore I could live with it.

Everyone can be different, especially because the radiation target fields can be different so you will just have to be patient and see how you turn out.

I had to go on Ambien in order to sleep. I would be awake 20 to 22 hours a day....I couldn't fall asleep.

Ditto with what David said...

Watch ambien if you try it. I had 2 bad experiences with ti and tossed it. It seems it makes a lot of people walk in theier sleep and do strange things, like removing clothes and the next morning wondering wht the hell happened to them. I found my shirt I sleep in in the bathroom one morning and the next, at the front door. I live in a split entry home and there is a wall then a drop to the basement. That cured me of ambien. I called my Dr and she said she should have told me about some reactions to ambien. It was about 14 months before I fanally started to get a couple of hours sleep at a time. Good luck.

David's right about the really slow recovery, while for him it was a process of weeks, for me it was a slow process of months. It will get better with time though, so live each day expecting the next to be better, if only slightly so.

As to sleeping meds, I take Ambien CR occasionally, particularly when I am on the road lecturing and have trouble with wildly different time zones and unbelievable early morning schedules. I haven't had the problem Jim has had, though those have been reported in portions of the population of millions of people that have taken it. You won't know if you don't try it. But there are other meds that have been around for decades, like diazepam (Valium) that are well tolerated and have minimal reports of negative side effects. To give you some idea how long diazepam has been the drug of choice, it was the drug the Rolling Stones were referring to when they said it was "mothers little helper" .... back in the 60's.