I started Radiation a week ago Wednesday.
This consists of getting up early, fighting traffic to the hospital, arriving at the hospital, changing into one of those lovely backless gowns, waiting for doctors, then actual treatment.
The entire ordeal perhaps takes a couple hours if one factors in the commute and wait time. Radiation it’s self takes maybe ten minutes.
It’s SO much easier than chemo.
I trek down to the basement of the hospital down a long deep corridor, past two large metal doors, to a room that has soft music playing, a long cold table, and several pieces of large machinery.
I lie on the table, where there is a smurf blue mold of my head that the radiation techs will secure me to ensure that I don’t move during the process, and needlessly radiate some perfectly good part of my body.
I like to think of this as the worst pillow ever. Then my table is raised a good four feet in the air, where I lay directly under a big orb that looks like the biggest salon style hair dryer ever- except rather than the middle being hollow—the middle of this is filled with all the things necessary to shoot electrical radiation in precise points in ones body.
Once I’m secure, elevated, and all those stickers I’m still wearing are lined up, the tech’s leave the room, close the massive doors, and once they are a safe distance away, they start the machine. There’s a loud buzz for about a minute, and the ‘BEAM ON’ light over my shoulder turns on, then the hair dryer orb then rotates to my back side (this is why I’m up so high in the air), and shoots me from the backside. Soon afterwards the techs return to the room, lower me down, detach me from my smurfy mold, and I’m good to go. It’s a painless procedure, the only side effect I can tell, is that by the end of the day I’m beat—but adding another 2 hours of running around in anyone’s packed day, I think could do that.
Next Thursday will be my last radiation, and I’m finished with treatment!~
In other more domestic news, Mr. Skitters had a big week. Last Friday he insisted that we let him out at some crazy hour of the morning, and never returned! Matt & I placed posters around or building, but when a week had past, and our posters had been ripped down, we assumed that was the last we had seen of our cat.
Low & behold, yesterday we got a call from a local ‘no kill pet shelter.’ One of our neighbors turned our cat in, and another neighbor turned in our poster. And after a trip to the shelter, a couple fines (which were less than his average vet bills!), and some cat parent counseling Matt & I were reunited with our kitty!
