Monday Monday

Today has been the best day in the past 4 days. I feel pretty good, still recovering from a rough weekend, but overall better. I woke up this morning with very little hearing in my right ear. Dont be alarmed, this is normal. Its a side effect of my whole brain radiation. This may be too much info for most- So here is your WARNING!- The skin on my head is raw, blistered, and flaky. Sadly this also goes for my ears. I know gross right? Radiation is awesome...it keeps on giving even after treatment is over. My hair could take 6 months to start to grow back. So for now we are just riding out the effects. But back to my ears- So they are flaky, blistered, raw disasters. This is also happening inside my ear, which messes with my hearing. That said, I can hear its just muffled like being underwater. Luckily, this is only my right ear. So all is good.

Now a quick run down of the my radiation side effects. (all of these are normal and expected)
-Loss of hair
-Skin irritation (blisters, super dry skin, sunburn like irritation)
-Nausea
-Loss of appetite
-Temporary loss of hearing
-Dizziness
-Tiredness/ lethargy
-Changed taste (my coffee started tasting odd, and now cravings for food I dont like normally)

Other side effects that I dont have- but could happen
-Sore throat/Mouth
-hypothyroidism
-Memory loss
-paralysis (very slim chance, has more to do with spine)
-Loss of eyesight (tech they dont know my I can still see out of my right eye.they say I shouldnt be able to)
-Seizures

Okay it looks bad on paper, but its really not that bad. Ive been dizzy since october its a side effect of my meds. Ive learned to deal. Everything else we just take a day at a time. Luckily most of these go away with time. As the radiation wears off the side effects go away. Hair loss may be here to stay, we just dont know until it decides to come back.

One good thing happened today! I got my script filled for my nerve pain in my arm. My arm just randomly goes numb, and always hurts. This is a side effect from my lung tumor removal. They had to cut a ton of nerves so them firing back up hurts. So my right shoulder has been in pain for a bit. As soon as I took the meds the pain stopped! woohoo. Not sure why I didnt fill that sooner. Id stopped taking them as my arm had stopped hurting months ago. So glad I refilled that. And happy that its already working. Normally it takes a few days to really kick in. Its more of a long term working drug. It didnt make me pain free, but it did cut it down to a manageable level.

Okay enough of my randomness. Point of this post, feeling better than I have been in days. Still working thru the side effects but overall there is improvement!