The Taber Family Blog

I had my morning radiation treatment today and also got to meet with Dr. Jones, who I haven’t seen in a while, since I’ve been meeting with Dr. Suplica each week. He hadn’t seen my Erbitux rash before, so he didn’t know how bad it had been weeks ago, but he still was excited to see the rash and again reminded me “the rash means it’s working, well.” He looked me over and peered into my mouth and said there was probably less than 10% of the tumor left based on the initial size he seen when he first saw me. I was quite happy to hear that. I’ve got about 2 weeks of treatment left, and he said overall, the pain in my mouth probably wouldn’t get too much worse. The week or two after the final treatment would be rough certainly, but the mouth pain has probably plateaued.  This is amazing to me, since I can still swallow pretty easily, eat foods (albeit soft ones) and generally carry on normally throughout the day.

Funny that he asked what pain medication I was taking and I said, actually nothing really. He reminded me that he could prescribe some narcotics for the pain. Now, I’m not trying to pretend the pain is not there, or be a “tough guy” at all, but the fact is, I really have no real pain so far that I cannot bear. So at this point, I’ll stick to Advil or Aleve if I get a fever and that’s about it. He was happy to see that I could swallow on my own with no real issues, and was curious that I could still taste food. I had actually thought my taste would leave me weeks ago, but I definately still taste food. For now anyway.

Crossing off the days on my treatment calendar,  I can see the end is nearing (Mar 26).  Color me “happy.”