Jon,

Good to see you have a start date and are finally able to plan out your treatment and recovery. I can tell you that none of us here can give you a day-by-day, blow-by-blow summary of how your symptoms will develop. This is such a personal disease. It�s effects and the effects of the treatment are completely different for every one of us.

I can tell you that the first month was not that bad for me, but others at my CCC started having problems with pain and eating inside of two weeks. I later formed very painful ulcers on my tongue that others never got. I was able to stay with solid foods for about 6 weeks, then had about 3 weeks on the ensure and VHC and now am back to soft foods.

I was relatively pain free until treatment was almost over and then got hit by the tongue ulcers and a very sore throat. You have to prepare for the worst and pray for the best.

I think you are asking all the right questions and I think others will contribute some answers that may give you some guidelines, but we�ll all be partly right and partly wrong.

My prayers are with you as I work in South America and know how tough it can be to be in a very poor and different culture while your ill. I generally try and get the next plane home, but have been stuck in bad places while deathly ill, it�s very scary.

Kelly