:. Father Hurts Best

So, my father's dentist took him to visit an oral surgeon today. This is the latest in a seemingly unending string of complications from the radiation Dad received as part of his treatment for cancer 2 years ago.

Here's what he found out today:
When you radiate your mouth, it changes the nature of your teeth, which can make your teeth crumble. This explains why Dad has been spitting out tiny pieces of his teeth for the last few weeks.

The other thing that occurs when you radiate your mouth is your blood vessels shrink and eventually die away. So it's not only that Dad's saliva glands were taken out, but that his blood vessels are shrinking which means that his jaw is dying. Yep, his jaw bone is slowly dying and needs to be replaced.

The worst part of the whole thing is that any one of the doctors before or after his radiation could have warned him that this would happen, or told him about what signs to look for, but not a single one did - even when Dad complained about the very symptoms that would point to this. And apparently this is a run of the mill occurrence for someone who's been through radiation.

So, what now? Well, beginning Monday Dad will drive down to St. Luke's and spend 2 hours in a hyperbolic chamber. He will do this every day for 20 days and then will have surgery to replace his jaw. They've talked about taking a piece of his hip to replace it or getting a donated one, or a synthetic one.

Why the hyperbolic chamber? Well, the hyperbolic chamber forces oxygen into your body which forces your body to create new blood vessels. These blood vessels are not as large, strong or good as the original ones were, but there will be more of them.

So the hope is that these blood vessels will be up and going before all of Dad's original ones finish dying and that these new ones will be able to take over. If they do, then the surgery should go off without a hitch and my Dad will be the proud owner of a new jaw and complete set of dentures.

Does this make any kind of sense? Has anyone ever heard anything about radiation causing this kind of thing before? This is just nuts.