Step 4: Radiation (and go back to work)

Burned boobies ahead....

I have been told A LOT that radiation is the easiest of of all the cancer crap that I have to face. But that sure didn't stop me from being completely freaked out by not just the process, but the aftermath too. Its like this dirty little secret of cancer survivors and doctors alike. Its easy, and then they use the phrases "dry peel" and "wet peel". Who thinks either of these things sound as though they will be easy?!?!?! And if you are going to pretend that "wet peel" doesn't sound scary, now imagine that whatever the hell that is is going to happen to your boob and armpit......

While I am not quite sure I agree with it, I am going to trust in my doctors, friends, and family that this is a necessary step in staying CANCER FREE. For the record, getting radiation is freaky from start to finish. The whole process starts with a simulation and getting marked (medical term for getting new dot tattoos). I have never wanted any sort of tattoo anywhere near the girls, but a dot smack dap in the middle of my chest was seriously the most painful poke I have had yet.

Every day (5 days a week) I have to go to the hospital. I take the elevator to the basement of the cancer building and scan my ID card to tell them I am there. The techs go get my body holder while I go to the locker room and put on my hospital gown. By the time you get this far in the game of being sick you don't even have to ask what to do anymore, waist up nudie butt. Then I have a seat in the gowned waiting room. (There are separate locker rooms for men and women, but once gowned you all sit uncomfortably in the same waiting area. Most of the time it is me in my gown feeling naked and like I am surrounded by old men who apparently don't have to put on gowns to be in the gowned waiting area.... there has to be some sort of injustice in this. It's gowned waiting, shouldn't everyone have to be in a stinky gown???? And today mine was clean and stinky--the kind of stink that makes you sniff your armpits to be sure it isn't you. I would have grabbed another, but that would have meant opening the door to the gowned waiting room full of old men with no shirt on at all.....)

Once they feel you have suffered just enough humiliation in gowned waiting the techs come get you and lead you back to the treatment room. I have a really hard time accepting the word treatment when I walk through the 12 foot wide 2 foot thick "door" with a handle that looks like a bank vault and a radioactive hazard sign on it. That is where my heart starts to race a little. Gratefully, all of the people in this department move really fast. Can't say that I blame them, if the door to my classroom looked like that I would spend as little time in there as I possibly could. They put you on a tiny table, put a rubberband around your feet, and uncover all of your dot tattoos and of course one boob. Using laser beams that shoot out from the wall they line you all up so that the poison treatment always goes to the same spot. They flick the lights off and leave the room (it is at this point that the telephone always seems to ring and I wonder who would call this room and what would be so important that the techs would stand still long enough to answer it). Then the machine turns on and start making its cross between a click and a beep and a hum sound while it slowly rotates around the table. After the longest 5 minutes ever they come back in and send me on my way. It is very surreal....

I have 7 out of the 33 treatments done, so by the end of October I will have another item checked off the cancer treatment list!!

And like most days, I'm tired out from radiation and being a mom so I will have to save the back to work stories for another post!