Head and Neck - After Treatment & Lymphedema

Dee58
Contributor

Head and Neck - After Treatment & Lymphedema

Hi... thought I'd pop in.  My 7 weeks radiation and chemo treatment ended on 13 May.  It is today 24 July and I have to wait until mid August for my follow up petscan so I know if I'm jumping for joy or not 🙂  

 

I'm one of the 50% unlucky ones hwo have ended up with lymphedema 😞  And now have to massage my face and neck morning and night every day for the rest of my life...

 

Just when I think its getting better, my throat becomes so painful I can't eat and have to swallow some "pink lady" to numb it.  I'm still on Fentynal (spelling?) pain patches... 

 

I've gone from size 14-16 down to size 8-10.  Wasn't deliberate 🙂  I always wanted to be the size I was in my 20's... hadn't planned on this kind of diet though...

 

I've taken up ballroom/latin dancing for exercise because I'm not a gym person.  Sometimes I'm fine and other times a simple turn makes me off balance and dizzy.  But I believe the exercise is good for us and for our brain 🙂

 

I would love to afford more Reiki (and if you have cancer and haven't tried Reiki you don't know what you are missing!  You MUST find a good Reiki master!  But I now pay out a lot of money for my lymphedema treatment so can't afford both...  one Powerball!

 

so if anyone else is a couple of months past the end of their treatment and wondering what to expect... this is my experience.  Plus I have a runny nose a lot and still have that annoying dry cough every now and then...   the runny nose might be my lymphedema though... 

 

Ah cancer... the gift that keeps on giving... in so many ways 🙂

 

Hang in there everyone... don't give up the things you love to do and if you didn't have anything before, find something now.  Life is too short to leave your bucket list for a "one day" scenario!

 

xxx

Donna

 

 

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