Hi there, I’m a 74 year old woman who was in fairly good health until I had radiation therapy for 5 days/week for 7 weeks following surgical removal of a small malignant tumor on my larynx 7 1/2 years ago. What prompted me to see an Otolaryngologist was that I’d lost my voice. Could only talk in a whisper. Apart from that, no other symptoms. Toward end of treatment I was beginning to really feel the fatigue, which got worse after treatment ended. I was warned about this by my doctor. My voice started to come back but within about 6 months I developed severe pain on the left side of my throat that radiated up to my ear. The doc that did the surgery sent me to a Laryngeal specialist at Mass Eye and Ear in Boston. His immediate diagnosis was a bad infection. He put me on a very aggressive course of antibiotics and anti fungals for 30 days. This led to severe GI problems, which persist and have worsened over these past 7 years. I now have a diagnosis of gastroparesis, slow gastric emptying, which means I can’t be far from a bathroom for most of the day. It causes me a lot of severe and nearly constant stomach discomfort.
My fatigue has increased since the RT and between that and the GI problems, my quality of life is really diminished.
The only thing that resolved after RT were the burns on my neck.
I still have problems with not enough saliva and my teeth have gotten worse, for sure.
My fatigue makes me feel depressed at times and that makes me anxious and less inclined to do anything or go anywhere.
Really upset about these cascading health issues.