What to Expect

Jeff, regarding texture of foods - the smoothest things I found were soft boiled eggs and canned peaches. But even those didn't work for very long. I was also not going to have the PEG but gave in 2 weeks into my 40 rads because even soft boiled eggs wouldn't go down - they were like sand paper - and it took an hour to get down a small glass of water. Radiation builds cumulatively, so it gets worse and worse as you get farther in. And the purpose of the chemo concurrent with rads is to make the rads stronger - both the beneficial and the side effects. I suggest you get the tube so you can stay well hydrated (even with the tube I needed IV hydration often because I threw up so much from chemo and amifostine) and sufficiently nutrified. Cancer treatment is very demanding of your body and the better you can feed/hydrate, the better your body can tolerate what is happening to it. 3/4 of the way through, I couldn't even swallow my spit anymore, and that lasted for a month AFTER too, so the PEG truly saved my life. I finally got it out last week, 8 months after it went in. Glad to see it go, but grateful for the work it did for me. Good luck to you.