That’s great that you’re doing lots of fun things together just now. It will really help you both not to focus entirely on the cancer … although it’s never far from your mind, I know.
As for RT, everyone is different and hopefully your husband’s experience won’t be too bad. Our experience was that the first two weeks were pretty much ok. A little more tired than usual, but maybe that was partly just the daily round trip to the hospital. By the beginning of week 3 he started peeing more frequently and with greater urgency. It was a challenge if we were driving for more than half an hour without a toilet stop. Fatigue stepped up a notch too. During that week the bowel also started to be affected, so urgent diarrhoea and passing mucus several times a day. On the advice of the lovely folk on this forum we made up an “emergency pack” for the car, with change of clothes, baby wipes, a plastic bag for any soiled clothes. He only needed it twice but thank goodness it was there!! Towards the end of the fourth week the exhaustion kicked in, and with it the low mood (unsurprisingly). The 7-10 days after the RT ended was the hardest. He was totally drained and just wanted to sleep day and night, between toilet trips and food - which he made himself eat so he could take his meds. He had awful acid reflux too, often making him sick. It was worse than either of us had expected, and heartbreaking to see him like that. However after the 10 days things improved dramatically day by day. Three weeks since finishing RT and he’s still back and forward to the toilet a lot, with considerable urgency. His bowels are still temperamental, but we’ve started reintroducing fibre, albeit gradually. We have to be careful that he doesn’t get overtired as he doesn’t bounce back quickly, but he’s definitely making progress. Whenever we have bumped into friends or been with the family their initial reaction has been to comment that he’s looking and sounding great, and they’re delighted to see him back to his old self. However if we’re still chatting half an hour later they notice him losing his spark and it’s not long before he’s pale and drained.
So my advice would be not to make any particular plans from the final week of RT through to about 3-4 weeks after. If things go well and side effects are minimal you will enjoy making last minute plans, whereas cancelling plans is very demoralising. (We had to cancel a theatre trip and lost £120, but I know others have had to cancel holidays, which would be far worse!!). The main thing though is that if your husband does have a similar experience to mine, don’t despair as it really is just temporary. I hope being forewarned is helpful, but I do stress that not everyone has such a hard time with it.
Wishing you both all the very best of luck with it. 🍀🍀🍀