True Charm - after every treatment I had the imprint of the mesh on my face for quite awhile. I agree with you. They called me back to remake my first one because they did not have my head positioned just right. This last one was actually tighter than the first two, but all of the equipment was different also.

Patty

Geri,

I was given Aloxi and Emend during my weekly treatment on Tuesday, took the Emend for two days immediately post treatment, as prescribed, and then I'd go back in on Fridays for another dose of Aloxi and 1.5 liters of fluid. This seemed to work very well for me and with my PEG tube, I fundamentally lost no weight during treatment and had no trouble with dehydration or nausea. (Afterwards, as I was transitioning off the PEG I did lose weight, though.)

As far as my skin, for whatever reason, I didn't experience bad burns which, being fair-skinned, I had expected. I used an aloe-based moisturizer from the Body Shop and had a couple of smallish blisters that developed about 10 days post-treatment.

Not sure if this helps or not.

- Margaret

Cheryl,
I would like to add another comment about RT and the recovery time. Another poster here stated that "the worst if it is over in 7 weeks". That's not quite accurate. About 7 weeks is when you will finally start to see some improvement in your condition. Stated another way, at the end of 7 weeks you will start measuring your forward progress in three week increments for several months post Tx. The post Tx effects of the RT alone gone on for about 3 weeks. The general rule has always been that it takes one month of recovery for each week of radiation. I was in great health going into treatment and tried my best to defy the rule - not. Once again, this is not to discourage you and all of us respond differently to treatment but I am a firm believer in planning for the worst case scenario. It was a good 2 years until I was about 95% of where I was pre Tx. After 2 years, some collateral damage stared to appear in my fibrotic neck muscles, as a result of the radiation. I have muscle spasms fairly frequently as a result and others here have reported the same effects. My side effecrs have been relatively tame.

Wow Gary. One Month for each week of treatment! That helps me feel better about where I am right now - still very red, dry, flaky, itchy BUT not bleeding from the neck any more. I had not heard this info before thanks

Patty

Gary my 7 weeks begins the 4th week of Tx and ends the 3rd week post Tx and I think that is the worst period for the majority of us that got radiation. Sure there are some that get worse earlier and some that stay worse longer but there are also the ones that are hardly affected by this Tx. I always qualify my statements that all of us can be affected differently but I believe that for the most of us that 7 week period is the worst and I just want people to understand that in the grand scheme of things the worst WILL ONLY last about 7 weeks. Weird way of trying to comfort or give hope to someone but it's the best I can come with this barbaric Tx.

It seem the the month for each week is a good benchmark for getting back to normal (or a new normal), but somewhat like David said, for me the worst was the last week of so of Tx and the month after(totally drained).

I also had a lot of difficulty for several months post Tx with eating and weight(after the PEG was removed) because of poor taste and little or no appitite.

Recovery varies for everyone. Your treatments and procedures were much more serious and invasive as I only had Chemo, RAD and selective neck dissection. My worst time was the week after my last Chemo and Rad. I had surgery about 30 days after treatments were complete. Back to maybe 85% 30 days after surgery but was playing golf, working..... Good news is I started to put weight on pretty soon, the bad news is that is was from my sweet tooth coming back before anything else. Before SCC I was not much of a sweets person, I now know it is easy to put on weight when you eat a lot of cake/ice cream, etc. It just takes time.

On average and everything being equal it takes an extra 500 calories each day for 7 days to equal 1 extra pound and vise verse.