Enough of this serious stuff...

I suppose you guys are getting sick of my super educational posts and just wondering how I'm doing. So.... despite having another 2 or 3 serious topics I'd like to discuss, I'll save those for another day.

So how am I doing? Pretty good actually. As I sit here, I feel normal and not too tired. I do have side effects from all the treatments and meds, but so far they've been quite manageable. Right now I have:
1. Runny nose/sniffles - side effect from the Salagen(pilocarpine) I'm taking to maintain salivary function.
2. Sore/bruised arms - side effect from the Ethyol(amofostine) shots I'm getting before each treatment to reduce my risk of mucositis.
3. Lack of jaw movement - side effect from ???? I just noticed this morning that I can't open my mouth very wide. If I try to open it as far as possible I can barely get two fingers in between my teeth. Even after the surgery I think I could do three.
4. Heightened sense of smell - side effect from chemo. This one is mainly just annoying, although helpful in determining if food is just starting to spoil.
5. Loss of taste - side effect from radiation. This is the worst one. It is the weirdest thing. Jake and I ordered pizza Friday night and I decided to make a garlic butter sauce to dip the pizza in. I put a bit of garlic powder in and tasted it. nothing. a bit more. nothing. After a while I tried to go off of smell, but put in a little more than I thought because my sense of smell is off too. I went to sit by Jake and he dipped his pizza in it and was like "How much garlic did you put in there?!" So, I guess even though I couldn't taste it, I WAY overdid it. I tried to make a cranberry jam/syrup to go with my pancakes. Same thing. I couldn't taste it but I had Jake sample it and he said something was just off with it. I love cooking so much. It's such a disappointment not being able to taste my creations or even cook effectively. With all the awesome recipes people sent us, I'm jealous of Jake.

Enough about me. There are probably a lot of you out there wondering what ever happened to Jake. Well, he's on two new meds and in the process of tapering himself of the steroids again (there was a period where he thought they might have actually been helping so he went back on them). The new meds seem to be helping with the back of leg pain, but they aren't doing a thing for his back...yet. He's on a pretty high dose of pain meds, but it's gotten to the point where he's taking them about as frequent as safely possible and he's still in pain most of the time. He usually gets .5-1 hours in between pills where he feels good and then it's back to being in pain. He tried 2 or 3 times last week to get ahold of the neurologist, but the office staff there is absolutely horrible and so Jake has yet to get an appt. setup. If he doesn't get ahold of the neurologist tomorrow he's going to try to schedule an appt. with a pain specialist and see if there's anything we can do there.