Hey bebarb,
So sorry of your situation but as many of us on here have pulled through the treatment so can you!
I am closing in on 9 years post treatment from the same cancer as you described. My chemo was different, I received 3 high doses of Cisplatin rather than the way you’re getting.

Follow the instructions from your oncology team to a T and things will be better!

Dental: first step is oral surgeon extracting any questionable teeth 🦷 that are in the radiation ☢️ impact zone. Then 21 days of healing before treatment can begin.

The Mask: get your radiation mask made by radiation team.
Feeding Tube and Port: please don’t refuse these! I seen several people who refused and they went through hell from collapsing veins not to mention the added stress on the nurses trying to inject the IV!
You will need a port to receive your chemo, fluids and other needs.
You will need the feeding tube to ingest your proper nutrition. My throat shut down after the second week and I could barely drink water and couldn’t eat by mouth for nearly a year….you need the tube!

Meds: Hopefully the oncology pharmacist will have a sit down with you and explain how to use your anti-nausea medication; follow the instructions carefully or you may end up in the ER as I did!

This part is lengthy but valuable!…
Classical Conditioning: Pavlovian Theory(Pavlov’s Dog), Little Albert Experiment(Watson and Rayner).
Long stories short (I hope!)
Ivan Pavlov while studying the digestive system of dogs in the late 1800’s discovered classical conditioning.
As the dog salivates at the sight of its food a bell was introduced. Through association and repetition just the sound of the bell would make the dog salivate. It even went further as just the sight of the person that fed the dog, the lab coat etc would cause the dog to salivate.

Then in the early 1900’s Watson and Rayner wanted to see if Pavlov’s discovery with dogs would work on humans.
The Little Albert experiment was born:
They placed Albert in a neutral room and introduced a white rat. Albert had no negative reaction to the rat so numerous repetitions were conducted.
Now when the white rat entered the room they created a loud noise which startled Albert and made him cry.
Numerous repetitions were conducted and through association and repetition, you got it, just the sight of the rat made Albert cry!
This went further as well; the sight of white hair, white scarf etc made Albert cry.

Why are those two studies important to a cancer patient?
Because the same thing can and does happen to many!
We associate the getting sick with the oncology team and TaDa, just like that, they enter the room and we vomit!
Do NOT allow this to happen to you! Don’t associate getting sick with the staff!

Hope this helps and feel free to pm me if needed for anything else as I have many post treatment problems.

Jody