On Healing...

On Saturday I went out for dinner with Si, best mate and business partner, and our wives. We were talking about me (as I like to do :) ) and I said that when I'd learned about my cancer and then during and after treatment I didn't really do any internet searches on the condition or the treatment. Now I'm an information whore, usually I can't get enough information about something, so what stopped me this time?

Whenever I did a search, the 'news' was always crap! For example, during and after treatment I had a mouth that was full of mucous. I literally could not swallow so I spent weeks with a bowl and tissues simply spitting up the mucous. This is not pleasant (as you can imagine). So I want to know how long this is going to last and get onto the internet. All I read are horror stories about people still having mucous twelve months after treatment. Same with saliva, people are still dry years after treatment. I realised very quickly that what I was seeing was the worst end of the scale, people who are still suffering and need help and re-assurance that they will get better. I imagine that most people do not fall into this category, they're more likely to be healing much quicker than the folks who are looking for help on the forums.

So, because Si told me I should, if anybody stumbles across this post, my mucous cleared up after about 5 weeks (3 weeks after radiotherapy ended), my saliva is much better, my neck is still sore and my shoulder still hurts, but they are healing. I'm not as tired or as down as I was. And all this has happened very quickly. It does get better. For me, it seems, I have healed very quickly, I was back in work weeks after radiotherapy. For you and others it may not be so quick, but don't think that all the horror stories you read are the only stories out there.

Physiotherapy

I've had trouble with my right shoulder since the radiation treatment and it's steadily gotten worse since then. Two weeks ago I flew to Copenhagen and was patted down by security at the airport. When I "assumed the position" I realised that I couldn't hold my right arm out sideways for more than a few seconds!

I'd asked for physio before Christmas and it finally started last week.

When I saw the physiotherapist (by sheer coincidence it turned out that I know her husband) she examined me and told me that my right shoulder has moved forward in its socket. There's a skeleton in the department and she showed me the ball and socket on the skeleton. The socket is very shallow, turns out this is one of the reasons we have so much movement in the shoulder, but it's also the reason the socket doesn't grip the ball very well and so the shoulder gets out of 'true' very easily.

The treatment is simple but prolonged - move the shoulder back into place. I've started with some simple movements and some (very) painful stretches. Then it's back there every other week or so to check progress and get more work. The good news is that it's completely fixable, my fear was that I had nerve damage and I'd have this painful shoulder forever but that's not going to be the case.