"But, isn't there some benefit to not hauling your weary body to and from the hospital every day? It takes us anywhere from 3-4 hours to get to/fr the hospital and get treatment on a non-chemo day." Yes and no. I also had a 60 mile RT in heavy Bay Area traffic every day so it was about a 3 hour trip for me as well. I slept mostly and didn't miss that part of it.

Psychologically though, the end of Tx can be a lttle frightening. There is actually some comfort in fighting the battle proactively. It can be scary when you know that there are no more protons or ct actively killing the cancer.

I haven't heard of magic (or pink) mouthwash not containing numbing agents, typically they have liquid morphine and lidocaine with benedryl, Maloox or mannitol. These things are locally compounded so there are variations. Like Petey mentioned I also had conflicting advice from onco nurses. I would pop a couple of morphine tablets prior to eating or drinking and that worked pretty well for me, occasionally when it was particularky bad I used the swish & spit also.