Check Up #1

I returned to the hospital today for the first time in a week. Going to the hospital on a weekly basis sounds like a lot, but after going on a daily basis for seven weeks, it just doesn't feel like all that much really.

Today's check-up was with with the medical oncologist. He was the one who said I should skip my final chemo treatment last week. He asked me how I was feeling and did his thing before saying that I was pretty much right on track and where I should be. That was encouraging.

My chief complaint was about the mouth sores. I wanted them gone last week! Apparently, however, the tissue that has been irradiated is incapable of producing new cells until 1-2 weeks after radiation. This would have been helpful information to have before they turned me loose. That way I wouldn't have woken up each day with the hope that maybe, just maybe my mouth sores were on the way out--only to be disappointed time and time again. The bright side of it is that I'm at the one-week mark and now the improvements really should come. This whole thing has been a lesson in patience beyond what I wanted to learn.

I also got the answer to a question that I didn't really want to ask because I was afraid what the answer might be. The question was: When can I expect to get my sense of taste back? And the answer that I got was something along the lines of, "Well, we fried things pretty good in there. You probably won't get your taste back for at least a month." And then he continued, "But your ability to taste should come back." Now, I knew all along that a permanent loss of taste was possible, I just never like to be reminded of it. So let's assume for now that most of my ability to taste (even if it is only one side of my tongue) will come back. But this month thing...ugh, it's killin' me!

For those of you out there who have never lost your sense of taste, don't. For your own good, don't. It's like watching a movie in black and white. Or watching Charlie Chaplin. Something's missing that you would have never missed if it had never been there from the beginning. But if you go 27 years with it and then it's gone...well, it just sucks...that's the bottom line.

One of the things that has been helping me get through all these treatments and that I have been looking forward to for a while now is an upcoming trip to California. Now, most of you know that I lived in Santa Barbara for six years, and you also know how much I love it there. (Sometimes, I still question why I ever left.) One of the things that makes Santa Barbara so great is its food--from fast food In-n-Out to the hole-in-the-wall El Sitio (best Mexican food outside of Mexico), the food there is absolutely remarkable. It should not be a surprise, then, that I was planning on gorging myself with all kinds of Double-Doubles from In-n-Out and chorizo tortas from El Sitio every day that I was there...not to mention the breakfast burritos and cinnamon rolls at the stand by the ocean! (My dry mouth is already watering.) Anyway, now I'm forced to come to grips with the fact that I will not be able to taste the very food that I have been looking forward to for so long now and it makes me very sad. I'm not kidding...this is very disappointing and has put a cloud over my day. My only hope is that somewhere in my mouth are a few healthy taste buds that successfully fought the radiation well enough to stay intact.