indiogrl's Cancer Blog
September 8, 2008
| 1 Year Anniversary Coming Up!!!! | Views: 682 |
Hello all, I haven’t been able to write for the past month because I have been SO BUSY at work! Which I think is a wonderful thing. August is a very busy month where I work, it’s very intense, but I loved it. I loved being back to almost normal.
When I left off last time, I was telling you how long the healing took. And it did, it was very slow. The depression that came after the treatments was, I think, almost the worst thing of all. And the anti-depressants didn’t do much for me.
THIS IS IMPORTANT IF YOU HAVE TO BE TREATED FOR NECK CANCER. One of the things that kept me so depressed was that I couln’t eat. I had the peg tube until late October, 2007. After the tube was out, while I could swallow, I still had taste issues and an incredibly dry mouth. Talk about not feeling normal, going into the Thanksgiving/Christmas time when food is the main focus. FINALLY MY RADIATION ONCOLOGIST SOLVED THE PROBLEM! In December, he really asked me, why won’t you eat? I told him I just had no desire to eat. I mean I really didn’t. So he said, let’s try something. He put me on a drug called Megace. They use it sometimes in anorexics and aid patients to stimulate the appetite. I’m telling you, within 4 days of taking that stuff the depression was gone and I was starting to eat, to feel normal.By Christmas I was eating really well. By January I stopped taking the Megace. By April I had weaned myself off the anti-depressants. But really if you are a cancer patient with appetite problems, you may want to ask about Megace. For me it was like a wonder drug.
So this Friday will mark the 1 year anniversary of my last radiation treatment. My mouth still gets dry and I can’t do bready things like sandwiches or crackers, but I can eat almost anything. Never did gain the weight back, though. And now I see that as OK. I can’t believe it’s been almost one year!
Thanks for your support -
Great to hear how well you are doing and thanks for the info on the drugs you took. I hope it will help someone else on here. cheers!
Heidi; Thanks for that update. Long time since we heard from you. It takes time to heal but you have done the wonderous thing by passing on an important drug that might help a lot of other people. Can I suggest something? Please post a new subject and title it: I will tell you why. The only people that will read this are your supporters so you need to do your own post with a caption so that all others who have this problem or something like it will get to read it. I found out the hard way that you have to do a new post on your own website so that everyone gets to read it when they go to general posts. This is something you need to share with so many other people. Just a thought. So glad to hear you are doing so well and that food has another slant to your taste buds. Who wants crackers anyway? Please stay in touch, as you have a different kind of cancer that not many people on this blog know about. It is always refreshing to hear good news so keep up the good job of staying positive. Weezie
Heidi; sorry I was wrong. Of course everyone will see your post. What I actually was trying to say is not all people look at our posts except in the case of our supporters, they get any new post you make but the general members (not supporters) cruise through a lot of posts until something may touch their need. So unless the title really strikes them eg: NO APPETITE CURE they won’t likely read it. Just a thought anyway that you might want to repost this amazing drug info. Weezie
Heidi; thought you might want to visit this site.
http://www.medicinenet.com/megestrol/article.htm
for added information. Boy Google is great. Weezie
Happy Ann. and Celebrate the rest of the month.