I need your prayers, not solutions

There is some progress since my last posting. First, I've not lost anymore weight. I now weigh 44.1kg, a gain of a mere 200g in 3 weeks! My target is 47kg. Second, I can now eat rice but it must go with soup. Eating rice alone is too dry & hard to swallow. Meat & chicken are still no-no as it is hard to bite & chew. Cod or salmon fish, steamed egg, tofu, potatoes, pumpkin are some of the soft dishes I can take with porridge or rice-in-soup.

It has been some 5 months since the end of radiation. Some saliva has returned although not to its pre-cancer level yet. Thus eating solid food is still a problem. Many of us take our saliva for granted but it is our saliva that helps us to bite, chew & swallow food. The enzymes in the saliva help to break down the food to enable us to swallow the food easily. The saliva also helps to protect our teeth from dental decay & our mouth from infection. So the next time you eat, give thanks to God for your saliva.

Some of you have given me suggestions & solutions to help me gain weight & I will like to thank you for your concerns & good intentions. But most of your solutions are not workable as you think you understand the problem but actually you do not. Most of you do not know about a condition known as xerostomia (dry mouth) which is caused by lack of saliva in the mouth. Xerostomia is one of the side-effects of radiation (for NPC cases). I do not expect you to understand my problem unless you are an NPC survivor who has gone through what I am going through. No amount of explanation will help either as I think it's quite diffficult for you to imagine a "no-saliva" situation unless you have suffered from xerostomia before.

What I need most at this time is not solutions but prayers. A listening ear & an assuring "I will remember you in my prayers" will be sufficient. Pray that my salivary glands will be completely healed so that my saliva will return to normal. The road to recovery is a pretty lonely one as I hardly meet anyone along the way who truly understands my daily struggles & problems. So your prayers will lift up my spirit.

thanks for journeying with me.
tsk tsk