Hang in There

My goodness things were getting a little scary. Mike was still taking his medicine for the radiation treatment. The weekly chemo and doctor visits were very tiring. It was a lot to say the least. He was at week 3 with everything and changes were most definitely happening. His skin was looking rough from radiation, he could not stand anything to touch his skin, we were cutting his shirts around the collar to make it more comfortable for him. We were still using the cream, the mouthwash and now they prescribed a mouth rinse because he was getting really bad sores in his mouth. It was such a rare prescription that no one had it, he had to be special ordered and it was so expensive. We of course have insurance but they did not pay a lot towards the mouth rinse, imagine that, but it was fine we were getting it regardless. Mike was tired, I could tell it was all really starting to get to him. He kept going and hanging in there best he could. I had bought him a squirt bottle and I filled it with very cold water, he would squirt it in his mouth and just let it sit there while it was cold then spit it out, he was really struggling with swallowing by week 3 and he was barely eating anything, even the protein shakes were hurting him. I was doing everything in my power to get him to eat something but it was just so hard for him. He was losing weight for sure, as I mentioned previously they checked his weight every week at radiation and he was definitely losing weight. They of course mentioned it at the appointments and they would give me new things to try, nothing was working. If I could go back I would have insisted they give him a feeding tube, but I had no clue that was what I should have been doing so we kept tooling along, you would have thought that they would have mentioned him getting the feeding tube, but nope not once did they remotely say a word about it!

When Life Gives You Lemons…Make Lemonade or Margaritas, whichever suits your fancy!