2nd round of chemo not nearly as much fun as the first. My energy level was starting to wane and my ability to eat was taking a dive due to the radiated mouth swallow thingy. My lovely wife and her nutritionist friend Nena (who flew in from Toronto to help) cooked up some mellow soups and mushy Vegan high protein/nutrient rich foods. Mmmm. Baby food. No Animal products for me. My wife made me Kale smoothies and something called potassium soup made with buckwheat milk. It was actually okay.
I did eat baby food. Carrot juice, also pretty good. You have to imagine an open wound basically in my mouth so anything salty, or spicy was out. I couldn't really taste sugar so it was pointless plus with no saliva the chance of tooth decay was way up. Sugar free candy or gum was ok but not too minty. I ate quite a bit of congee (Chinese rice soup/mush). I have had a life times worth of congee and am now good. But it was good for a while ( thanks to Judy's mom for cooking) and its what saved me from getting a feeding tube.
I was also prescribed magic mouth wash by my radiation Doctor that has anti fungal stuff. Steroids I believe and pain killers. At first it worked ok. Swish it around for a bit then swallow, I could eat for about 10 minutes then it would get too painful again.
if you ever have mouth issues remember to not eat bananas. I may as well had a mouth full of razor blades. The fact that they are kind of pasty so they just stick and with no saliva to wash it away it was all bad. Way more acidic than you'd think. My taste buds were pretty much cooked by now so flavour wasn't an issue because there was none.
Dry mouth... The worst dry mouth ever. OMG. We picked up a humidifier which helped. The worst was sleeping. I'd wake up every hour or so and need water. Which also meant I'd wake up every couple of hours and need to pee. On the plus side I started to lose some weight. On the down side , I started to lose a lot of weight, really fast.
The pain killers started to be my friend. Unfortunately they didn't really work. I started with Tramaset. Meh! Then went to T3's,now that's a whole other story. They say they cause constipation. That's an understatement....
to be cont....
