Dryness

When I met the oncologist before my radiotherapy started he told me about one of the side effects, the dryness and lack of saliva. He told me that as I would only have treatment on one side of my neck the saliva gland on that side would be destroyed, however the gland on the other side should be spared. He said that the surviving gland would 'ramp up' and start to supply about 90% of the saliva I used to get and that I probably wouldn't notice the difference.

At the moment that's partially bourne out. I have saliva, so I'm not totally dry. However I am a great deal drier than I used to be. I said in a previous post that I keep water nearby all the time. Night time seems to be the worse, I wake about 3 or 4 times a night to drink water, and oddly enough this seems to be getting worse at the moment.

I'm hoping that my surviving gland hasn't yet fully kicked in and that as it does I will lose the dryness. This effects my eating, talking (my voice sounds really thick at times), sleeping and just general day-to-day stuff as I need to be sure to keep a drink handy.

I have a follow-up next week (17th November) so I'll know more then. Hopefully he'll tell me that the other gland takes a while to recover, hopefully!