Meeting with mouth/throat therapist

We had a meeting today with the therapist that gives speech, mouth, jaw, neck etc etc therapy. It looks like they are particularly for patients who are receiving radiation treatment on their face and neck area. She was very informative as to what we can expect specifically because of the radiation treatment - the effect specifically to her mouth, jaw, and throat. She gave us examples of exercises that can try to help lessen long-term side effect.

I can still see my Mom struggling to accept the fact that she has to have chemo-radiation therapy. She is really against it and its hard to keep convincing her. Today she was saying how she wanted to delay treatment for 3 months to see if her "natural," and "NEW START" therapy will just shrink the tumor and make it go away.

I am completely NOT convinced that she should take that risk. True, the chemo-radiation therapy doesn't guarantee that the tumor will go away but without any of these modern medical treatments, she has a greater risk that the tumor will spread to her brain and kill her within 1 month to a year. The bottom line - it is way too risky and I am one to play it safe. It is better to take the less riskier route.

In other news, we got a really suspicious call from the radiation doctor the other day ... something about something lighting up in one of her scans in her ovaries or something? Unfortunately, Mom took the call and didn't bother to hand me the phone so she didn't understand nor catch everything the doctor said. However, she did understand that they will run more scans and tests on her to check on it - it, whatever it was. SO FRUSTRATING.

Lastly, the finalized chemo-radiation therapy has been given to us. Instead of starting on November 9th, she'll be starting on the 16th ... It's radiation every day for about 7 weeks ... Chemo the first monday, the second monday, the fourth and fifth monday.

Next: Meeting with the speech therapist on Tuesday and meeting with the Chemo-therapist on Wednesday.

In other news, congratulations Kristin! A baby girl, I am so excited for you! Can't wait!

--