I have a couple recurring themes in this treatment for my throat cancer.

One is that I can't predict how I  will be on any given day.

Over the weekend, I was feeling pretty good — enough to play two rounds of golf, although I did neither particularly well.

In fact, I have stopped betting on my golf game, because it was a lot like being hustled by pool sharks. (In the last bet, I shot an 87 with a 10 on one of the par-4 holes and Neil Fulce shot a 75. There's a lesson learned.)

Nonetheless, I showed up Monday at the dentist's office for a teeth cleaning. My hygienist,  Nancye, thought there might be an issue of having my teeth cleaned while undergoing chemotherapy and radiation.

Turns out there is. Apparently, as your teeth get cleaned, there's a lot of bacteria that gets shuffled around in the mouth.

I wasn't worried about that when I went in. I was worried about gagging in the process, so I brought my own barf bowl with me. I just thought that was being considerate.

I was approved by my cancer doctors for the cleaning, but only if I had 2000 mg of Amoxicillin (antibiotics), which is nearly 10 times the dosage I had at home.

But then I developed a new malady in my mouth — a sore on the back side of my tongue.

I shared this with my radiation oncologist, Dr. Dean Davis, who expressed surprise I only had one sore. I'll get more he assured me.

Oh, goody. In addition to fatigue, nausea, retching, hair loss, constipation, diarrhea,  hemorrhoids and coughing, I can add tongue sores to the mix.

While we're at it, let's add dry mouth.

I'm beginning to envy the baseball players who spit every time the TV camera looks at them.

I'm missing my tendency to drool. Especially at night when my mouth feels like a curled up, parched tile in the desert.

The good Dr. Davis suggested, and I couldn't agree fast enough, to skip the teeth cleaning until the end of my treatment. I'm pretty sure this will save a big mess on the dentist's floor, notwithstanding my handy barf bowl.

I have a new mouthwash called Biotene which is supposed to help reduce plaque and stimulate saliva. I could use less of the former and more of the latter.

My health agency, Blue Shield, sent out a nurse to watch over my treatment. She's from Riverside. My wife said she sounded old over the phone.

So to my surprise, when Margaret showed up at my doorstep, I noticed she adds to a long line of pretty, blonde, blue-eyed nurses caring for me. I'm fine with that.

I wanted, and got, an ugly nurse at my vasectomy, but I say bring on the pulchritude in my current medical need.

Margaret's goal is to get me the treatment I need without wiping me totally out in the process. Drugs could be our friends here. Hydration is another friend.

I'm on board with those goals. No sense bashing fish's head too hard to make it wiggle, I always say.