Nice post Charm!

My house has termites. I had the guys with the nasty spray and bag come over to deal with it. I've already had to take all my food out of it, bag everything that might absorb and hold the poison, rent a motel room for two days, and more. What pain in the ass. At the end of the process, the guys came back and told me that they didn't calculate the volume of the house properly and they would have to leave it bagged for another day and do another additional treatment.

After all that I have been through, do you think I am going to take a chance that there wasn't enough bug juice to kill all those little buggers, and a year later they would just bloom again, maybe even leaving this worse than they are now. And of course some of them will become resistant to the poison and it won't work on them at all? And I would have to go through the whole process all over again, only this time I might have to replace my whole roof because the little guys had a whole year to prosper and to undermine it? Not a chance. I'm going to do it right even if it is a bit more pain in the ass.

The consequences, especially since they have been doing this for years, and they know how much bug poison it takes to kill them all for sure, since it is well calculated and been proven on thousands of houses before mine, by lots of other bug killing companies. I'm going to tough it out..... that's what logic dictates even if there appears to be an easy way out today, ( I mean they probably got them all right? And wishfully, since I am miserable, I really want to believe this is really just overkill) and I really hate this process. What about you?

My radiation treatment side effects didn't really get the worst till 3 weeks after the end of treatment. Since you are going to have a long recovery period, stick out things and get the full treatment the way it was designed from looking at what happened to thousands of patients before you. It isn't going to shorten the crappy recovery symptoms that you are going to have for weeks to come anyway.

In my case the locations of the beam and the duration of the sessions changed as we progressed until the last week was only focused on one location and my session was brief compared to when I started.

Sorry to be so long in posting back to you all, but I have spent a lot of time sleeping because then I don't feel the pain. Yes we are finishing my last two treatments. I had one today and the last one will be on Friday. I agree that it is the best thing to do and was having one of those low moments when I wanted to quit. I try hard to stay tough, but I am by myself and sometimes I let all of this get the best of me even though I try so hard not to.

The doctor gave me a product called Dromboro and I have been putting gauze soaked in it on my neck every three hours for the past few days and following that with a cream called Biafine. The Dromboro is an astringent that is sold over the counter and states that it is used for things like poison ivy to dry it. It has dried up my neck and the relief from the burning was pretty close to immediate. The Biafine is making a yellow crust on my neck that the doctor says is my skin healing. I know that if I try to remove the yellow crust my skin bleeds so I don't do that. The doctor was very happy that my neck was now dry and seemed concerned that it was so wet on Monday. Does anyone know why? Everything that I read prior to radiation both times said that I wanted to keep the skin moist with the lotions that they gave me. Previously they had me using Aquaphor which is like Vaseline.

The good news is that it does feel better in some ways - it is not burning, but the stiffness in the skin is not too comfortable and I am trying to continue to excersise my neck and mouth so that they don't stay stiff. The best news is that I only have one more treatment to go. Thanks for letting me know that it will not get better right away so that I don't get my hopes up.

Pete how is the new PEG???

Patty

Very glad to hear that you are feeling better. You have done well and you are just about there. 1 more to go and then that is it - the end of the radiotherapy and onto the recovery part.

No one would blame you for wanting to quit - I know that I wanted to quit before I even started.

After my daily treatments I would often come home and just collapse on the lounge suite to rest, lots of people do that, it takes so much out of you.

Karen

Thank you for the encouragement Karen. I look forward to being on the recuperation side of the radiation. I had very few side effects the first time so this has been all new for me.

Patty

Biafine is a marvelous cream and should heal up the red skin fairly quickly. When I used it, they said it could not be used on open wounds. The Aquaphor never did anything for me. Biafine is also a deep wound healing cream so good on neck dissections. Glad you decided to finish and are almost done.

Tkae care,
Eileen

Good1
ah, the old "yellow crust" - despite it's appearance, is a good sign. I can only speculate about your doctor's concern, but my team had worried when my neck was not what I would call "wet" but more oozing and when the neck skin does heal up it won't be "wet". I still slather on the moisturizing cream every day over a year later. I just ran across some photos taken of my skin around a similar timeline to yours and my skin was REDwith partial overlays of yellow crust.
Very glad to hear your doctors are helping out. My radiologist's nurse started me on the Vigilon with free samples. It will get better and better

Thanks Eileen and Charm. Today was my final treatment!!!
I am so glad to be finished with this part of the journey.

There is a lot of yellow crust and the nurse at the Cancer Institute said that it was a good thing today. It has been a little difficult to get questions answered over the holidays and I have chosen to be asleep most of the time so that I don't have to hurt. It is interesting that we use a lot of the same products that patients in the burn unit use.

I am now looking forward to healing and moving forward with my speech therapy and swallowing therapy next.

Patty
Congrats on finishing your treatments. Sleep is good for your healing. Dont forget to get your nutrition and minimum 48 oz water daily. Those 3 things will help you to heal faster and in about 2 or 3 weeks you will start to feel so much better.
Hang in there, the light at the end of the tunnel is almost visiable now.

Thanks Christine. I am getting very good at getting a lot of sleep. The Biafine crust is a little less this morning. And yes Eileen I do notice that my neck scars look better!!
CHARM - I was wondering what type of cream do you put on it after it heals. The nurse said to stick with Lubiderm or Ucerin and of course hihg spf sunscreens.

Last time I had radiation it was a very light dose. I worked through it at a very high stress job that was a minimum of 60 hours a week. Maybe I survived on the stress. I had some redness but nothing severe and I was eating fried chicken right at the end of my treatments. Of course last time the radiation did not stop this new tumor from developing either so I will take the side effects if it keeps this monster out of my life.

Enjoy your day. Has anyone heard anything on Pete? I know that after my surgery they kept me asleep for 8 days so there may not be much news for a bit, but I think of him often and miss his sense of humor.