Moving Along

Today I started with my new plan to stay ahead of the pain game. I did my swish and swallow and had a strawberry Ensure for breakfast. This was followed by my first dose of Loritab, the pain medicine. This works very well and I only took half a dose (1 tbs) I was feeling okay when I left for my Radiation.

I had a conversation with Dana, my Radiation Therapist and she once again stressed the importance of proper hydration and nourishment. I told her that for all intents and purposes I was on a liquid and pureed food diet. I told her I tried to eat a protein bar but was having a great deal of trouble swallowing it. She suggested I put it in the blender and add some soy ice cream. I thought this was a brilliant idea as there are 26gm of protein in the bar. After the Radiation I had an hour before my next appointment so I went to Cafe Anderson where I thought I'd try the scrambled eggs. They tasted like rubber but I did manage to get them down. I also finished my first bottle of water and eagerly reported the latest ingestion to Nurse "R".

My next meeting was with the speech therapist although her official title is "Board recognized Swallow Specialist." At this point I could make some comment about Linda Lovelace but I won't. Anyway she stressed the importance of  swallowing and not allowing those muscles to atrophy. I told her I was basically on a liquid diet and she said that most neck and head patients usually are as they approach the last few weeks of their treatment. She said she would see me in a couple of weeks. Don Vold came by to see how I was doing and if there was anything he could do for me. I told him I was hanging in there.

Having covered one end of today's events I am now waiting for part deux, the Bowel Management class. I will have more information after it is over.

Enlightening would be the way I describe it. We were greeted by Annette Bisanz and given handouts upon entering the classroom and then saw a 30 minute film on bowels and how to keep things moving.  Annette, who also narrated the film  was excellent and really took bowel movements to a new level , as well she should. I left at 12:00 and stopped off at Walgreen's to pick up my new fluoride prescription. The new one should be much better as it is brushed on as opposed to using trays. That's it for now, I'm going to take my pain medicine and a nap. Maybe I'll have a bowel movement, Annette would be so pleased.