endure

the past 4 days were really nightmare for me, and i think the worst is yet to come. my condition got worse and worse over time. now, i can no longer speak. i need to reject all the phone calls becos i lost 100% my voice. my throat is so painful it causes a very bad migraine. so instead of squashing my throat, most of the time i'm squashing my head. the ringing in the ears never go off for 3 days, even now it's still ringing. the best part, my tongue. i got two big holes on the tongue bleeding continuously. the pain, dunno how to describe, maybe like somebody using a hand-drill on the tongue?

every sip of water i need to force it down my throat. eating is a complete torture to me. frankly speaking, if i'd finished my radiation treatment, i rather go on empty-stomach.

half hour before any meal, i need to take the pain killer. before i "officially" eat my meal, i need to take the anaesthic gel. then i hv only 5 minutes to eat the food. the pain will start coming back after 5 minutes. u may think maybe the food is too hard for me. no, i'm taking soft liquid food like porridge and cereal.

well, most of the time i wasn't able to finish my food in 5 minutes. so what happen when the pain comes back? the very first time, i actually broke down and cried. my wife got a shock. i tried my very best to hide my tears from her, but no, the pain, the suffering, the misery overtook the rationality. my wife didn't know how to response to me. i could see the tears in her eyes, but she was trying very hard to control.

i learned the lesson. the moment the pain starts coming back, endure, eat faster, endure harder, eat even faster. if it gets too painful, stop.

the time that i spent lying on bed gets longer and longer. the pain is causing too much fatigue on me. sleeping is now the best activity for me, provided i can sleep. due to the pain and also the dryness of the throat, i need to drink a lot of water even in the middle of the night. so actually i didn't really get quality sleep at night.

pain

i'm getting some kind of unbearable pain on the tongue and in the throat. the tongue got too dry that it keeps sticking to the teeth causing the tongue to sore. as for the throat, i'm now experiencing pain even when drinking water. so eating and drinking has become a torture to me.

since my last chemo, i'd a new side effect, my left hand last two fingers r numb. the numbness does not go away no matter how i massage my fingers, how i move them. last sunday, when i was cutting my finger nails, i realised that all the fingers on the left hand were weak. i couldn't even clip my nails with my thumb and index finger.

today, i was told that my platelet count 60 is too low (normal is 150 - 400). Dr. DL said the cisplatin is affecting my bone marrow in producing platelets, and for that, i need to omit tomorrow's chemo. omit, meaning i'll hv 1 session less, no make up. he was very concern when i told him abt my numbness. i was prescribed with some neuroforte, which oso indirectly tells me that this is not a blood circulation problem, the chemicals probably hv some bad effects in the nerves. i was wondering if i did not voice out abt this numbness and go thru the next few sessions of chemo, will i eventually lose my left hand? from the facial expression of Dr. DL, this problem is more serious than i initially thought.

it's not too bad that i'm skipping the chemo tomorrow. at this toughest time (Dr. DL said one, the last two weeks would be the toughest time), skipping a session of chemo somehow lighten the misery. especially the weekend fatique and nausea feeling. i need a break. since i can't break the radiation therapy, a break from the chemotherapy is a consolation.

after treatment

today, i asked the doctor what to expect after the entire course of my treatment. this is what he said to me...

"after u finished ur last chemo, we'll ask u to come back every month. the first 2 months we will followup on all the side-effects. basically most of the side effects should be gone by then except the sense of taste and the dry salivary gland which would take months to recover. the third month we will conduct a thorough scan to confirm that u r cleared. usually the tumor is still there even after the treatment, but it will continue to shrink for a period of time until it's totally gone. so the scan is scheduled to be 3 months later. most of the patients would be cleared by then. only a handful will hv residual cancerous cells. if that's the case, we would conduct a surgery to remove any residual cancerous cells. the relapsing of npc is usually in the first two yrs. so u r require to come back every month for checkup. u r considered recovered only after u passed thru the first two yrs."

not so bad. at least i know i'll hv 3 months of peace after treatment. so sick of reporting to hospital everyday...