Johanna,

I am also a base of tongue patient/survivor and completed the prescribed drill of radiation and chemo. I worried myself sick because of it taking my medical team 1 month to the day from the day of my diagnosis until my first day of radiation treatment. It just took that long with getting the preliminaries out of the way to get things going.

Go forward with your radiation and chemo treatment now! Do not wait any longer as that will resolve absolutely nothing! Yeah, I was scared of radiation too but I never even considered eventual death, slow and painfully, as an alternative course of action. Never thought twice about it. This is on top of the fact that I am self-employed with a one man (me) company with a business that requires a lot of oral communication with people. Imagine the momentary fear I had under those circumstances with no employer except for me to lean on, no disability plan to call on, no leave of absence benefit to utilize, no accrued paid vacation to grasp at and no other skills in my back pocket to fall back on in the event of a resulting speech impediment or chronic dry mouth to deal with. All of those things darted through my head but made no difference. I simply had too much to live for with having to raise a 10 year old grand son at 59 years of age. I went for the recommended cure and simply decided to deal with any residual consequences that came along one at a time.

I had the best of care givers in the form of my loving and concerned wife along with a stadium full of relatives cheering me on and praying like there was no tomorrow. Yes Johanna, I simply did what I knew it would take and shunned the idea of any "new age" type treatment forms offered for the most part by folks who probably did good to graduate high school, much less ever being able to add the initials of "M.D." at the end of their name.

Now. I personally am a little over 8 months out of treatment so I know where I am coming from although everyone weathers the "dark tunnel" a little bit differently than his neighbor. The radiation; yep, not pleasant but beats the hell out of the alternative, see above. Painful? Not really, at least in my case. I did feel just plain crappy most of the time but never in agonizing pain for any reason. Yes, you will lose your taste buds starting about the 2nd to 3rd week into treatment and it may take a year or longer to get them back. Sure beats that old alternative I mentioned earlier however.

Let's move next to the dry mouth issue. Yes, my docs advised me that the glands on my right side would be fried for good but they took great pains to protect those on my left side and did an impressive job. I do have trouble with dry mouth but it is not a constant thing. It comes and goes throughout most every day. Some even post here that their salivary function improves with passage of more time although I cannot really say I have experienced that yet. Even so, it is quite manageable and you will learn to adapt and compensate as you go along. You might need to get used to having a bottle of water with you most of the time, chew special gum by Biotene and to use some of the many other products from Biotene as well as other manufacturers. Again, you will learn to adapt and if you stick with this site you will pick up more tips than you ever wanted to know about!

Now, get moving on that treatment and just stick with this site and fire away with every posssible question you can think of.

Bill D.