Anchors Away: A New Side Effect

Its been a week since chemo treatment II (And only 16 radiation treatments left to go) and a new side effect has appeared. One of the side effects of radiation treatment for head neck and throat cancers is dry mouth. Another side effect or maybe its part of that is that your saliva and mucus becomes very thick. Thick to the point where swallowing it with water isn't really possible. What happens is that it just sits there in the back of your throat until enough accumulates and the gag reflex kicks in. You can imagine the rest.

This started to appear on Sunday and yesterday really became a problem. One of my tasks during treatment is to make sure I get enough nutrition and hydration. This latest turn of events, aside from the obvious discomfort, has started to cause a problem in that regard. It appears to get worse during the day so I suspect that the radiation treatments may trigger an increased production of this a few hours after treatment. It also makes it hard to sleep as well.

Today I started a plan of rinsing my mouth out and using a "spittoons" of sorts to handle the saliva. There isn't much that I can do about the mucus that drains in the back of the throat. I was so wiped out this morning that I ended up moving my appointment for radiation to later in the day. Turns out that didn't work so well but the people at the radiation center did get a demonstration of what I am going through. :-) (I will leave this to your imagination.)

So where does the Anchors Away reference come from? One of the ways to help mitigate this is to dry out the nasal passages. Enter the prescription sea sickness patches. A side effect of the sea sickness patch is that it dries out your mucus and saliva. It takes a bit for the patch to go into effect so hopefully by tomorrow I will notice some difference. Who knew that at the same time I am getting treated for cancer I could also be preparing for a cruise.

Seriously this is the one side effect that does have me a bit concerned. I've lost about 15 lbs so far. The ability to keep food and medicine down is important to the treatment regime and this does hinder that ability. And of course there is the down side of how it feels as well. :-)