Getting Radiation is so Totally...Mental!

11 down and 19 to go...

It's just souped up x-rays, right?...

At least I didn't have chemo...

Thank goodness I don't have to drive to Columbia every day. Now THAT would stink...

This cream is *magic* cream. I'll just smear it on. No burns for me, no sir...

And on and on go the mental games. I think if you asked a group of cancer patients what it's like to do battle with the dreaded C, both during treatment and the years after, most would tell you that it is a mental fight as much as a physical one. Because the treatment for cancer lasts so long (I'll be hitting three months exactly from diagnosis date to end of radiation; for whose who have chemo, herceptin, or other adjunctive therapies, add another 3-12 months), I've come against the "I'm-so-over-this" wall many times. Heading off to radiation on your daughter's birthday is not fun nor welcome.

Also, it's not unusual for the circle of support to suffer compassion fatique. You get lots of calls up to and around the date of surgery, but the check-ins peter out during "rad" time, and everyone's lives move on while you're still checking in at the hospital desk. (Every day. At 1:30. They don't ask for my name anymore. Yep.)

Then there is the radiation itself. I have to be honest, radiation freaks me out a little bit. It's invisible, but you know it's killing cells -- good and bad. My skin is still intact and normal-looking, but I have small bouts of fatique that make raising newborns seem easy-peasy, and all my surgery sites zing and ache again. I learned about the interior soreness the hard way when a slight readjustment in the bed one night sent a shock wave of pain throughout my armpit. (Or, maybe I should not have moved that dresser earlier in the day...no one told me I couldn't do heavy lifting yet!)

The radiation experience itself is so isolating. You lay on an elevated bed under a huge energy-spitting machine while everyone runs out of the room and hides behind a lead door. "Oldies" play in the background. I compare the whole experience to what it would be like to be probed by aliens with their invisible death rays while they play music they think is comforting to you. "Duke of Earl" will forever be a creepy song to me.

But, I tell myself:

It gets a little less creepy every time...

I am 11 days through...

I am most definitely going to be able to lift heavy dressers some day...

And best of all, I won't have to get zapped on my birthday at least.

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