I’ve officially finished three weeks of radiation out of the seven total I’ll receive. In the past week and half or so, side effects have begun to creep up, which I’m going to unload here.
So far, they’re all pretty minor, or at least seem pretty minor. There are a lot of them, though, and because they generally make me feel kinda crappy they’re also making me more irritable than normal (and I’m normally not irritable at all, so that’s kind of another minor side effect and just makes me more irritable, ha).
The biggest one is a sort of low-grade motion sickness. Some days I wake up with it (like today), some days I only start to feel it after radiation in the afternoon, some days I don’t feel it at all. Most of the time it’s there to some extent, though. It makes me feel ever-so-slightly nauseated—not enough to throw up (or even feel like throwing up), but enough to make most food sound very unappealing. So far I’m still able to eat and my diet has been relatively normal, but I do worry there will come a day when eating becomes a chore. In the meantime, there are still foods that manage to evade this revulsion, but they seem to flitter in and out of favor on a near daily basis. Last night I really wanted sweet potatoes (didn’t get any :\ ), today they still sound nice but not nearly as nice. I’m beginning to understand (firsthand) why weight maintenance can be such a problem with cancer.
I also frequently have a sore throat now, in the upper throat. It’s not terribly painful, but it is around most of the time and that’s irksome. It’s soothed by cold water, and so I find myself drinking buckets of water and needing to pee all the time. There’s not much of a solution here beyond that; there are some numbing medications, but it’s not bad enough to warrant that yet and I’m sure that would come with its own annoyances.
My left ear has begun to feel clogged again, or it could be that I’m losing a bit of hearing in it (which the oncologist warned could happen). Hopefully it doesn’t get worse, but as it is it’s hard to separate out sounds from loud background noise again.
One scary potential side effect—though I don’t know for sure if this is truly happening—is a loss of focus/short-term memory (again, I was warned this could happen). Words have been escaping me more frequently of late (and I’m a writer—I’m good with words!), and that seems ominous. It could be completely unrelated, though; perhaps I’m just tired.
I haven’t really felt fatigued yet, or perhaps I have, but it’s a different type of fatigue than I experienced with my previous surgeries. Most of the day I feel as active as normal, and it hasn’t impeded my ability to work, exercise, walk the dogs, or do any of the normal activities I partake in. I am ready for bed earlier than normal, though, so that may be how the fatigue is manifesting. I’ll have to wait and see if it gets worse.
On the bright side, I’m back to climbing at my normal level and feeling strong again. Even better, climbing is practically the only time I can guarantee I’ll feel good. For whatever reason, when I’m climbing I don’t notice the motion sickness, or sore throat, or loss of focus (I do notice a loss of hearing in a noisy gym). So, I’m actually spending more time climbing than normal because it just feels good. If this remains true for the duration of radiation, I’ll be thankful!
Anyway, I’ve got four more weeks, so that’s plenty of time for new side effects to creep up. I have the feeling there won’t really be more effects, though—just worse versions of what is already happening. Or maybe just the same effects with greater frequency. Either way, I’ll be glad to be through this chapter; it’s definitely much worse than I had anticipated!
