My First Hyperbaric Dive

If you are claustrophobic, hyperbaric treatment, regardless of the clear acrylic chamber it’s done in, will ramp up your phobia. The television above you won’t help. Your technician sitting right next to you won’t create the illusion that the acrylic walls are gone. You must suck it up and control your fear for two hours, [...]

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The first attempt at a hyperbaric treatment goes badly

Hyperbaric treatment should have all the letters in “hyper” capitalized, except maybe the “r.” And considering how I felt the night before my first treatment, maybe that “r” should capitalized and bolded too. in another post I’ll explain why some of hyperbaric is just hype. But right now I’m going to focus on the positive [...]

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Necrosis…the really big scare

Of radiation’s side effects, necrosis is the most dangerous, leading to a miserable death worse than the one I could have with the cancer itself. Necrosis is basically the rotting of the jaw bone. I’d sacrificed my teeth to reduce that risk. Now, a year later, on some poor advice, I’d inadvertently squared the risk [...]

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Post radiation problems pt 2: What the heck does “necrosis” mean?

Besides choking and flying teeth, dentures brought other challenges. Usually the lower plate felt good, for an hour. Then something would change in my mouth and it would begin involuntarily snapping, like a turtle, causing me to bite my tongue or the inside of my jaw. Sometimes the lower dentures felt like a brick, and [...]

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