Radiation was the strangest experience… I was sort of able to conceptualize chemo and I even had the ability to visualize the microscopic war on cancer cells with each drip of it, but radiation… I couldn’t (and really still can’t) put that into any frame of reference, metaphorical image or scientific understanding. 

I would lay on my back, topless on this narrow “table” with an “Amber-shaped” pad around me holding me in the most precise position ever. I’d have to hold a bar that was behind my head with both hands, leaving my naked, scarred, ugly, misshapen, uneven, what-was-left-behind excuse of a “chest” totally exposed, in the most vulnerable position ever. 

The techs…at least 2, sometimes 4, would stand over me, pulling at my Amber-shaped pad, to adjust me ever so slightly, in order for the invisible beams to hit the exact spots they tattooed onto me…. ‘cause it wasn’t good to be even a millimeter off. 

Then a machine would whir and click, rotate and contract, all the while me having to take in just the right amount of breath and hold it for just the right amount of time. And if I’d mess up, I’d have to try again and again to get it just right… ‘cause we didn’t want to radiate my heart.

I’d lay there, focusing solely on my breathing and focusing the hardest I’d ever focused (‘cause I HATED when I messed up), wondering just what was happening. The treatment itself didn’t “feel” like anything. I could actually “feel” chemo, I could “feel” the coolness flowing through my veins, the catheter in my jugular literally cool to the touch… but radiation, I couldn’t “feel” it while it was happening. I had unfortunate side-effects, yes, but not an immediate sensation as it was happening to help me visualize an actual battle on those damn cancer cells. So, I’d lay there, have hands all over me, hold my breath, hear some clicks and whirs, get up, get dressed, leave, and come back the next morning to do it all over again. For 28 days straight.

Day 1 was February 19 and over the next 6 weeks, I got to know and cherish some of the coolest, most amazing RAD techs ever. Each of their interactions, impacting me to the core…both literally and figuratively. I think their faces will forever be seared into my memory as they looked down at me on the table, my bald, chemo-gray complexioned, tired…no weary…-eyed face looking back up at them, trusting them with not only my life, but with my vulnerability. 

*Post 1055

A Little Of Everything :: 2/19/18 :: Post 170

Snow. And lots of it. Starting a new routine of treatment. Pain. Work. Concern for a kid who’s healing from surgery. Stressful snow driving. Yummy dinner and getting to enjoy food. Rockin’ to 80’s music with my girls. Puzzle-doin’s with my husband. Lots of sillyness and laughter and dancing. Family time and memories. I love my family. Like….so so so much. 

So radiation started today.

Day one of 28. And it was rough. But also so fascinating. 

I got there today and had to be shirtless for yet another set of medical professionals. A new staff member was being trained and, well, it’s par for the course that I got to be one of the ones he learned on. 

After undressing waist up, I laid flat on a table with a special Amber-formed cushion surrounding me. (I cannot move at all the entire treatment time so the cushion helps hold me in position.) Then I had to put my arms above my head and hold onto a bar behind my head. And I had to be in that position for an hour. (With two bad shoulders and tight muscles from surgery, I was in pain the moment I got into position…I thought “oh gosh, this is gonna be a loooooooong hour…” And it was…)

While I was in that position, a huge machine with a couple of big arms on it was around me. One arm had a big disk thingy on it. And the other, opposite of the disk, had a big flat rectanglular paddle-like thing. And the two arms rotated around me, stopping at different angles. When they stopped, they would move and adjust and make a bunch of different sounds. Then I’d be told to take in a deep breath and hold it for anywhere from 5 seconds to 30. This went on for the first 30+ minutes as they took a series of x-ray images. Then it was treatment time. Treatment was similar to the x-rays in that I couldn’t move and had to do the breathing thing over and over and over again. “Take in a breath and hold it…..good……you can breathe. Take in a breath and hold it….let a little out…good….now you can breathe. Take in a breath and hold it…take in a little more…hold it….ok, now you can breathe.” So.Tedious. At one point they put this thick sticky film on my skin and made me move my head just slightly to the right for several turns of the arms and cycles of breathing (the head turn increased my pain quite a bit which after 30+ minutes was not fabulous at all.) Then they removed the film and one of the techs came over and had me breathe in and hold it a few times while she drew all over my neck and chest with a sharpie. Finally, they completed treatment with my head still turned, a few more machinearm-rotations and more breathing instructions. 

Then I was done. The techs came over and told me I could bring my arms down but I literally couldn’t move my own arms. I had to ask them to help me….and man was it painful. Throughout the whole time, I seriously had to pep-talk myself through it….”you can do it, Amber. You’ve done harder things. This won’t get the best of you and you will win this.” Haha. It makes me laugh now but the pain I was in was seriously so much that if I didn’t talk myself through it, I wouldn’t have been able to finish it. But I was not about to quit. Nope. 

What was fascinating – the machine and all of the tiny little seemingly insignificant and small adjustments made to my position…because they actually make a big difference. All the breathing – well that is done to get my heart out of the way of the radiation beams so my heart doesn’t sustain any damage. And the slight turn of my head to the right – that was to keep my esophagus out of the way and protected from being radiated. 

Whoa. How grateful I am for Radiation Oncology doctors and technicians that are so meticulous and precise….so attentive to detail…so careful to tediously treat me well so that the cancer is eradicated but damage to my healthy cells is minimized as much as possible. 

What a day.

Numbers :: 2/19/19 :: Post 525

The numbers tell an astounding story. 

Since diagnosis on August 25, 2017…18 months…….76 weeks………..532 days we’ve battled so far. To date, 183 appointments. Having met 174 DIFFERENT providers. Survived 18 chemo rounds, every 21 days, for 52 weeks……28 radiation treatments over the course of 2 months………..8 surgeries in 16 months that have left 20 separate scars on my body… And the seemingly never-ending countdown is on……37 days of tamoxifen behind me…………….3,613 to go. And these numbers don’t include the people that have thought of us, prayed for us, supported us…as that is a number I’ll never actually know. Wow. 

(No post for 2/19/20)