27. Taking a Rad Trip - Part 1
These next few posts will be taken directly from my journal I wrote during my radiotherapy treatment. I called it ‘Taking a Rad Trip’, because I’m not really keen on the whole ‘Breast Cancer Journey’ expression. A journey is a holiday, or a planned trip. This certainly wasn’t.
I just wrote down thoughts and my views on the whole process and noted other things that were going on in life – there is always something else going – isn’t there?
Wednesday 25th July
Today is the day I start. I’ve waited 12 weeks for this to begin and it’s finally here. Almost 9 weeks since my mapping, so I hope I can remember ‘The Pose’. I’m sure it will take some time to get lined up, tattoos found and everything ready.
People keep asking me how I’m feeling about it. Today? Ok. Not worried. If I think about the whole treatment and what could and may happen, and what it’s doing to me, that may be a bit different. So it’s one day at a time, one week at a time.
Reading some stories and listening to some people doesn’t help. Fortunately I’ve talked to some positive people and that’s a good thing. Everyone is different I tell myself.
The hospital is only 15 minutes away, the walk from where I will park will probably be about that long too! At least after today I will get my times for each week. I’m not sure how long I will be able to work, but I’ll take it ‘one week at a time’ as they say in football.
I had some flowers delivered this morning, from our gorgeous kids. I cried. Wanting to wish me all the best for treatment and assuring me I will sail through. They are so thoughtful. Our son rang from Greece yesterday to wish me well.
There is a lot happening in life right now, but I’m focussing on the positive.
Be back
(After treatment, I had to see the nurse. She asked the usual questions and talked about care of the area being treated. She gave me a tub of sorbelene, to put on the area after treatment and each night. It’s so important to keep the area from getting too dry. I asked if I could use aloe vera and she said yes. I was SO relieved. Some oncologists won’t let you use anything other than what they prescribe, yet other treatment centers grow their own aloe and encourage patients to use it)
Thursday 26th
2 down, 28 to go!
It’s all run pretty smoothly, very efficiently. First appointment was a bit longer as it was over 2 months since I was mapped, so the therapists took a while checking the readings and measurements. I met some of the team who would be there and we had some laughs, which was great.
I think I’m going to get rather sick of rattling off my name, address, date of birth and area of treatment. I might try it in a few accents just to break it up a bit. Or not.
The hospital is great, the set up good and the room is really nice. I’m not shut in a small dark room, it’s a warm yellow room and it all goes very quickly. I would have been in and out in barely 15 minutes today, but had to see the nurse to have my BP checked again. That was a nightmare on a number of fronts, but I won’t go there.
I also saw my breast care nurse on the way in, good to have a chat with her as she headed over to the other hospital for breast clinic.
I didn’t need to see the oncologist today; too soon after starting treatment, so I will see her next week. This will be a weekly thing on Thursdays after treatment. They seem to keep a close eye on how treatment goes. I couldn’t wait to get home and put some aloe vera on my breast – sorbolene will do for the back. (this is because there is the possibility of ‘exit’ burns on the back where the radiotherapy passes right through the body. Not a nice thought, is it?) I’m still very tender from this nerve re-generation business and will be glad to talk to the oncologist about that next week.*
9.30 treatment tomorrow morning – a sleep in! (though I woke at 5.45 this morning!) Patients can nominate the time slot they would like for treatment, so I’ve opted for between 8.30-9.30 each day.
I only worked 4 hours today (a fill in) and it was a good day. Discovered I’d been updated to Windows 2010 (from 2003!) when I got to work, so that was a bonus and I managed to work out how to do a few new things and sorted a couple of issues with online support, so that was positive. So grateful for the support I get at work – a great team.
I have my ‘times’ for next week. These are handed out each Friday and upon arrival each day I have to ‘check in’ and state the next day’s time as they can be changed.
(*Just before I was ready to start treatment, I started to get a shooting pain in my arm and my side and into my breast. This had come out of nowhere and had me worried. I enquired, and it was apparently normal following surgery. The nerves were re-generating and ‘firing’ again and boy, they sure were firing sometimes!)