My year scan went off without a hitch. My second garden was better than the first! I was even able to take "the shot" and keep a job and sanity despite "the diet". The oncologist was even pleasant. Yippee, my next round would be in two years. The clean scan helped me see that full time work would be possible. I had a temporary job over the summer and felt ready for the challenge of the 40+ hour week. I found a great job with enough challenges to keep my mind off cancer.
The jaw pain continued and massages stopped nothing. Between the jaw pain and realizing that my voice would never come back to what it was, I was having more and more stress. I loved my job and couldn't bring myself to leaving. Tired of over the counter pain relief, I went to the Chiropractor. The tension eased; but the jaw pain did not.
Eventually, I was tearing at work unprevoked and unable to see without watering eyes. I saw my regular doctor who sent me to an internal doc for my jaw pain and the facial swelling. After an MRI, he ruled it to be my salivary glands. Now I was doing research to verify that I had damaged glands.
At my annual oncologist appointment, he finally agreed that I was perhaps the one person that would ever have multiple problems stemming from radioactive iodine abolition treatment. The first being that my tear ducts appeared to have closed. The second was my salivary glands as they too had apparent damage. Remarkably the oncologist agreed send me to two specialist.
Whew, I was beginning to think I was just crazy and life was not going to get better. We all started focusing on solving the root cause of the pain. Life could actually get better?
