Bombing the monastery proved to be both a strategic (the Germans weren’t using it as a fortress, at least initially) and tactical (once it was flattened, the place became a serious defensive position of rubble piles and deep cellars) error. But that’s beyond our purview here. Canticle closes with a stunning long-latent effect of radiation overdose after the thermonuclear destruction of North America. The punchline comes from the development of a slow-maturing tumor over many years. It turns out, the recovery from therapeutic radiation can take almost as long.
Timelines for cancer recovery—more specifically, recovery from radiation therapy—vary enormously from person-to-person and problem-to-problem. I’m now nearly 8 months out from the end of my treatment. I’ve recovered on many axes. Of the things that were hanging around the longest, that pain under the left base of my tongue is getting less and less. I think it’s probably just a patch of hard scar tissue pasted over the place where the tumor spent its frantic but thankfully truncated life. I have a surprising amount of salivary function back. Considering that my right parotid gland had been taken over by a large mass of tumor cells, I’m very lucky to have any moisture in my oral cavity at all. Indeed, many patients with Stage 4 mouth and throat tumors regain only a small percentage of salivary function after 36 months [1]. Presumably for those folks that is a permanent condition.
I do have that accumulation of mucous in my throat throughout the day and especially in the evening. And, most critically, I still have trouble swallowing. That is likely to be permanent in my case, I’m afraid. I’m gonna have to learn how to eat through the discomfort, dammit.
I saw my new Radiation Oncologist this week. A very young guy who replaced the big-personality woman who started me down the path. Somebody asked me last year when I reported how young Dr. H (Oncology Surgeon) was, whether I was ok with that (his youth). You know, technology and treatment change so rapidly that I’m inclined to think the younger the better. I’m reminded of a teleconference a couple weeks ago with our corporate “Young Scientist’s Group”. We’re transitioning its leadership from the young man who did it for the past couple of years to a younger woman. Her knowledge of communications technology kicked both my butt and the butt of the former Group leader. I’m guessing Dr. H has to struggle to keep on top of developments in his field, and the kids coming out of their residencies are further along the technical learning curves.
Anyway. Young Dr. N (who replaced retiring Dr. Z) peered around my mouth and throat. He said “Man, there’s a lot of swelling in there.” And he said “I don’t mean to be rude. But do you notice that foul rotten-meat smell from your throat?” I told him only sometimes. He says that’s from the radiation- and chemotherapy-killed tissues yet to be resorbed. He says given the size of my tumors, it could take years. And that for some patients it takes three years for the swelling to go down.
Icky. I guess I’m in for the long haul. Hopefully not as long as the Second Coming in Canticle for Leibowitz. And I suppose I need to do my part—start getting more exercise and learn to eat by mouth. For all that, a casual web search suggests that for many mouth and throat cancer patients, immune system function takes at least 12 months to come back and the throat mucous problem can take five years to forever.
Turns out I’m lucky. Not just to be alive, although that’s certainly a matter for gratitude given how advanced my cancer was. But to be as healthy as I am at this point, less than a year after treatment. And to think, I remember when a year was a long time… .
Notes
[1] http://www.ro-journal.com/content/6/1/125
Parotid gland-recovery after radiotherapy in the head and neck region - 36 months follow-up of a prospective clinical study
Jeremias Hey, Juergen Setz, Reinhard Gerlach, Martin Janich, Guido Hildebrandt, Dirk Vordermark, Christian R Gernhardt and Thomas Kuhn. Radiation Oncology 2011, 6:125 doi:10.1186/1748-717X-6-125
No comments:
Post a Comment