Some of you guys have really gotten to know me thru all of this. Well the reason I eat sleep breath and am fighting to get thru this is because I love and do theater.
Which brings me to this concern- with having less saliva will singing still be a possibility?
Right now I can barely talk let alone sing because my mouth is so raw. But I was wondering what your experiences were.

John, your mouth will definitely get better. I recall hardly being able to swallow water for 2 months, and for at least a month all I could do was whisper. And even that was tough. So hang in there. Eventually you'll be back on Broadway!

I have a 2.5 year old, and had so many issues initially reading & singing to her. I am now pretty good about 5 months out... Although, I'm sure she'll be old enough soon to tell me how bad my singing is & it will stop again. Of course, the quality of my singing was poor long before cancer treatment!!

Everything you are experiencing right now is temporary. While going thru treatments the future can look pretty bleak. We have had several musicians on the forum who have gone on to have successful careers after rads.

Towards the end many of us have lost our voices completely. I couldnt even whisper for about 3 weeks. I got very good at hand gestures and scribbling on a dry erase board. Losing your voice can be another temporary side effect, hope you dont have this issue.

You are past the half way point now. I know its not easy and it can be scary not knowing what to expect while feeling lousy. Heres a tip to help keep track of your progress and also to help you see your accomplishments. I would use holidays as goals for myself. For instance, 4th of July is coming up and you will have finished everything by then. You could plan to be well enough to attend a 4th of July celebration. By Labor Day you will be so much better that all of this will be just a memory. I finished rads in September and planned on having a huge Thanksgiving with tons of people and food. I know its far off but by Thanksgiving you will be so much better. You should be able to eat almost everything and taste it too. Its going to be the very best Thanksgiving you have ever experienced! You could even be back to doing your theater work again by then.

I am a school music teacher--voice, choir, piano, general music. I was very worried about my singing voice. It was written into my treatment plan to do IMRT to my lower neck. This was because there was a large scar from surgery (gone now!) over my larynx. Usually they place the scar below but because my neck was so thin (yeah, it is actually more muscular now because I have done so much exercising I guess) the surgeon had to put the incision there. Anyway, they had to radiate it. Thus they did IMRT to protect my larynx beneath it.

I had my larynx scoped recently because I was having hoarseness only for singing (videostroboscopy) My larynx looked really good, untouched by radiation. My thyroid BTW got hit and I am hypothyroid and have to take meds. The ENT, who specializes in voice, especially singing issues, said he thought some speech therapy would help, and that the hoarseness was because of the muscles surrounding the larynx not functioning correctly. I guess that describes it. Anyway, the exercises work very well. I think I was getting into some bad habits about singing, using muscles I did not need to use--extrinsic laryngeal muscles--instead of relying on breathing technique. Something like that. Anyway, when I practice them in the mornings, I'm good all day. The speech pathologist told me that good technique can overcome my problems.

In short, my voice does not quite function the same, but not really worse either. I remember when I got out of treatment I tried my singing voice out & it was horrible. I was missing huge chunks of pitches. It is not at all like that now. I had someone tell me the other day when I was just messing around singing a tune how good my voice sounded, which did a world of good for my psyche.

So it is too early for you to panic as far as singing goes.

Best,
Anne

My wife has a regular restaurant customer that had his OC treatment 15 years ago and carries a water bottle on a cord around his neck and he still sings in his chuch choir. Remember we all can be different but the rad he received 15 years ago created far worse dry mouth issues than the IMRT of today.