65 Hours and Counting

Recently, I've been marking the progress of my treatment by football games. For example, when the NFL was still playing its preseason (which I don't care for), I knew that I still had a long way to go. During the first college football weekend, Oregon State (yes, the ferocious Beavers) were playing Portland State. Now this game was not televised, but I knew that the third game of the season, against ranked Louisville, was going to be aired on ESPN. So yesterday, when I woke up, I knew that I was getting close to the end of radiation because the Beavers were going to be playing the Cardinals. Now, for any of you who follow football, then you know that the end result was not pretty, but I didn't really care. I mean, it would have been nice to see the Beavers win, but it was just fun to see them play a nationally-televised game--for a small market team like the Beavs, that just doesn't happen too often. So anyway, I am now in the last weekend of football while receiving radiation and chemotherapy. It's been a L-O-N-G road, but I'm almost there.

Even when the treatment is over, however, I'll still have my share of waiting before things are back to normal. I'm hoping that the mouth sores--and therefore most of the pain--will be gone in the matter of a couple of weeks. My doctor has emphasized how some side effects will subside quickly and others will take up to 6 months or a year before they are completely gone. I can say right now, however, that if the mouth sores go away and my taste comes back, I'll be a very happy camper!

On one hand, it's hard to believe that I am as close to the end as I am. On the other, I feel like this should have been finished a long time ago. In either case, it's a good thing that I am as close to being finished as I am because I honestly don't know if I could take another full week of this. The side effects have been manageable up to this point and even my doctor says that now I am getting to the part of the treatment where they really can't do anything more for me in terms of pain management. Anyway, I've got less than 72 hours until the worst of this is over...then, I'm on the downward slope.