Just a brief update--I had a regular follow-up appt. with my medical oncologist Monday and I mentioned my problems swallowing and they promptly set me up with the speech pathologist at the hostpial who will give me a swallowing test. At first they said his first available opening wasn't until Novemeber but then they called back and got me in earlier--tommorrow I go for that test.

Meanwhile, I saw a different RO than my usual one, because the usual one is away at a conference, yesterday as part of ther regular weekly visits with an RO that take place during rad. because I'm having rad for my breast (which is still a total piece of cake).

It was pretty funny because the nurse at radiation medicine did a very thorough job first in terms of finding out how I was feeling and where I was in terms of recovering from the rad and chemo for the oral cancer. Then this poor (young) RO from Roswell Park walks in knowing I'm having breast radiation but apparently having NOT looked at the rest of my records, and looks at all the nurse's notes and says "um, you're having trouble *swallowing*?"

So I filled him in on the previous oral radiation and then he said that my throat could have narrowed because of the radiation, as well as having scar tissue that keeps things from going down smoothly, but that it should improve and get better over time. He seemed to think this would just happen even without swallowing therapy, just by itself and said that it takes at least a year for the radaited area to really recover as much as it will and some people say a year and 1/2. I wish my normal RO had told me that! It seems like I'm hearing all these long estimates from doctors AFTER the radiation.

Anyway, I hope that by June (which will be a year) I am back to eating pretty much normally, but it did give me some perspective.

Oh--and I've done a couple more bowls of soup since my last eating update but eggs doidn't work too well.