Not a good day

Oh I am despondent today. And because (according to Catherine's kvetching circles!) I can't complain to Geoff, I've decided to moan here: just look at my poor husband's radiation area!

This is his reddened, sometimes almost blackened, skin where the radiation has taken place. (He has the last bout tomorrow: the thirtieth session).  It's painful and itchy at the same time. The red circle is where his skin comes off when I put a plaster on: he has places where the skin comes off, and then even with the soft papery sticking plaster you can use after surgery, the skin pulls off when I pull the dressing off. So it feels like a never-ending spiral - you remove a plaster, and oops up comes some skin, and there's a raw spot. Then the blue circle marks a surgery area that hasn't healed: this was part of the cut performed when the original salivary gland was removed, and, since mid-October, (and it's now endish-January, so about 90 days later) it still hasn't healed. So that needs a plaster over it. Then the purple part is where there's a hole instead of proper flesh, that's where the salivary gland was removed. And the yellow circles are where his hair isn't going to grow again. I don't know, it's just horrible, watching bits of my husband being taken away at a time. Never mind the facts that his face is swollen, his eye keeps tearing, his taste buds are gone so he can't enjoy anything he's eating and he can't swallow anything whole anyway because his throat is swollen so much that he can hardly swallow water or pills! It's just a disaster altogether and to try and keep cheerful through all this is sometimes just too much!