It’s been a crappy couple of days. I don’t feel like being funny or wringing some kind of meaning out of the wet rag that has been this week. Yesterday, I broke down in the speech therapist’s office when I realized that there was a whole new set of tongue and swallowing exercises I needed to be doing to prevent dysphagia, something I’ve never heard of that sounds scary. (The past few months have been full of things I’ve never heard of that sound scary.) Also, my jawline is swollen, which might be the result of Lymphedema or the radiation; neither the speech therapist nor the radiation tech could tell me for sure. There are red hatch marks under my chin from the mask, I felt exhausted by 4pm yesterday, and I’m already waking up in the middle of the night with dry mouth. I feel like I’m not allowed to be having a bad week since I only began radiation on Monday, and it’s supposed to get considerably harder from here. But I’m having a bad week, nonetheless. Adapting, I guess. It’s all still so new and surreal. Tony was not a man of his word; I’ve had a different radiation tech every afternoon and have found them all lacking in bedside manner. They act like I should know the drill by now, and betray exasperation when I reveal that I don’t. Which direction do I lie down on the table? Tongue depressor first or mask first? There’s also music playing during my treatments that, while intended to soothe, has been unnervingly inconsistent. I realize this is a first-world problem, but I’ve found it kind of jarring to listen to playlists that range from the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” to classical in a single session. I’m often the youngest person in the waiting room and sit there resenting this, then go back to the radiation area where all of the patients’ masks hang, freakily, on a pegboard on the wall, two of which are clearly for children (one’s decorated as Spider-Man, the other has a fuzzy tiger hood over it). And then I feel like a total jackass.
Cancer, conundrums, cartoons
Well, then 