Since my surgery, once of the most common questions that people ask me is: are you in pain?
The pain is not overwhelming at all, but there are some areas more painful than others, due to the impact incurred and the rate of healing in the area.
My left leg is winning the race easily. In relative terms, my leg is a nimble Raptor bounding across the savannah of healing; my arm is a steady Stegosaurus plodding along contentedly, and my neck & shoulder region is a lumbering Brontosaurus, bawling and bleating of a recent mauling from a T-Rex.
I have plenty of good medicine to help me cope. I’m at home now, but the drugs I had at hospital have been prescribed for me to have here too. I have various medicines alongside my notebook, which I use to record what I take and when (it would otherwise be easy to stuff up the dosage frequency). I also keep a record of what I’ve eaten and when, for my dietician. No dosage boundaries there – if hungry, I eat. If not – I still eat.
I’ve got a couple of weeks to heal as best I can, until radiotherapy begins. Radiotherapy will impact (damage) my neck and throat areas once again, so I need to be focused on getting as well as possible prior to that phase. Eat, eat, eat – but that’s the subject of a future post!