Food and Radiation Geekiness in One Entry!

A week and a half done, four and a half more weeks to go!  I wasn't really feeling the stereotypical radiation/chemo stuff too much up until now; but I have hit the point where I will sadly acknowledge their annoying existence.  The annoyances thus far:
-  complete exhaustion - I felt more tired getting out of bed today then I did getting into bed last night!
-  dizziness - standing on one foot or turning quickly without teetering is now a dream
-  nausea - my anti-nausea prescription has become my best friend, but sometimes it cannot even manage to
   help (I have discovered that eating some old ginger snaps from the holiday season helps though)
-  radiation "sunburn" - I am getting a great peeling "sunburn" from the heavy radiation directed to my forehead, my ear, and most of the left side of my skull.  My head is also usually cold because the radiation aimed there is resulting in the loss of a decent amount of hair.  So thank you to anyone who gave me a hat, they have become a good friend of mine when ever I have to go outside.

On the topic of my radiation, I managed to get a copy of the paper that shows how much radiation is directed at the different parts of my head!  It shows the parts of my brain, the dosage, and the location.  They created this at Dr. Stille's after they did a CT scan on me at my first appointment.  It is color coded, but probably the most important color is purple.  The purple area is the predominant space of my now removed tumor, so the purple space now is just filled with normal brain liquid.  I have a hole in my brain!  I think it is cool, particularly since I haven't lost any function as a result of my holey brain. (That is not meant to be a pun).  There are also some colored lines, which you might not be able to see.  The colored lines show the dosage of radiation.

I had a fun time as a nerd looking over this.  I completely understand if you don't.  My husband zoned out after a bit and started playing Angry Birds.

On another more humorous note, with the addition of my regular chemo drugs on top of my Temodar (the chemo drug just for brain tumors), eating has become a new adventure.  Not necessarily because of the nausea, but because of the taste.  I always heard people talk about how things will taste different, but I figured that it was a bit of people expecting it to taste different when it really didn't.  I was completely wrong.

Nasty food that used to be good:  

-  oatmeal - my favorite flavor of oatmeal now tastes like cardboard (with the texture of mush)

-  water - always tastes like metal (even my own saliva, which is just weird)

-  maple syrup - just a sticky mess that makes pancakes soggy

-  lemon - I'm pretty sure I could eat a whole lemon without wincing once from the sourness

-  wheat bread - it doesn't taste bad, it just has no taste 

-  Dr. Pepper - my favorite soda now tastes more like a plain Coke (which isn't bad, just odd)

-  spicy food - I am pretty sure I could eat a couple habaneros peppers without batting an eye or breaking a sweat

However, one nice thing about all the funky food tastes that I have right now is that I have been doing more adventurous cooking just because it is fun to see what I can and cannot taste.  I learned yesterday that I now like pineapple and cheese on my pizza! (Canadian bacon is still gross, whether I'm on chemo or not.  Ew.)  The adventure food I'm trying tonight after not liking it too much when I was a kid . . . meatloaf.  Baked ground beef here I come!