Chapter 9 – Time Tells

“Om Sainathaya Namaha” 

“

Time has many ways of testing A PERSON’S WILL either by having NOTHING HAPPEN AT ALL or by making EVERYTHING HAPPEN ALL AT ONCE” 

Doctors in India are very kind souls, they do not overload a patient with information until they feel time is right for a patient to absorb and handle such information without any untoward effect to the patients recovery and well being. So was in my case too. There was quite a bit of information which came my way, given by the doctors as my treatment progressed and doctors felt the time was appropriate to share such information. Although I am not very sure how the timing of all this information aids a patient’s mindset, in my case I always felt If I knew the entire package upfront I would have dealt with it in a much calmer way not that I could have avoided any of it anyways. I must admit I was not all that good at handling surprises and kind of got jittery and nervous when faced with them. However, that was Sai’s way of preparing me to handle surprises. I can safely say this after almost 10 months, now I do not get that ruffled when a new surprise throws up. 

Here is the list of surprises which pop up as time passes: (This applies to patients undergoing similar therapy as mine for similar nature of disease and defects) 

Mouth: 

1. Mouth tissues will contract as the radiation happens and continue to contract at least for 6 months after completion of last cycle of radiation. This means mouth opening will continue to keep on reducing. This can be countered by doing mouth opening exercises 5-6 times daily, failing to do so can result in permanent impairment in speech and having food through mouth. 

2. All normal human beings have a very critical organ known as “Salivary Glands”. These glands continuously secrete “Saliva” in the mouth which keeps the mouth moist all the time and helps in two ways a) It fights and kills bacteria in the mouth. b) It aids in swallowing everything that we eat. It is one of God’s greatest gifts and we hardly ever tend to notice this in all our lives. Well radiation to the mouth area permanently damages the Salivary Glands. This damage causes some permanent lifestyle changes: a) One has to continuously carry a bottle of water and keep sipping little water all the time to keep the mouth from drying up. 
   

3. Mouth brushing is compulsory after having any food or drink as any kind of food particle that gets stuck in the teeth forms bacteria and causes tooth caries which permanently damages the teeth. Time for food has to be fixed and one cannot have food any number of times and any time, otherwise most of the time would be spent in brushing. This does not happen if you have natural saliva. 

4. Coffee, tea, milk or water is required to swallow any food that is had, without these aids food will tend to stay in the mouth itself. 

Mouth Opening Exercise Device 

Will continue with other areas in the next post……... 

Time Life. 

LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL