What's Goin' On

I am hoping in the not too distant future to write a blog post that has nothing to do with my health. Won't that be nice? But since there are people asking, and I haven't written in awhile, here we go...

I have officially started radiation treatments. I go to the hospital every day at 2:45. Treatments last only a few minutes. It's a bit like getting an X-ray. They take a few minutes to line me up. The tattoo dots on my skin line up with the fixed lasers in the room so they hit the same spot every time. Then the machine rotates to three different places and emits a little buzz each time. The treatment doesn't hurt.

The field they are radiating is my whole right chest side. It's not a small beam. And for anyone who is curious, the radiation is generated by accelerating electrons around a coil in the machine, and not by any type of radioactive material. Here's a shot of what it looks like.




So far, I haven't had a bad reaction. They do say the over time you experience fatigue and it's very hard on the skin. I can tell that my body is taking a hit and am trying to take very good care of myself by going to bed early.

I have done 11 treatments, and have 22 more to go. The plan is to finish the first week of March.

Right now my biggest challenge is juggling everything that's going on. Adding a daily trip to the hospital into my schedule makes for more chaos than I had bargained for.

I'll keep this short for today, as I need to turn my attention to work and a whole other host of things that are piling up on my desk.

Love,
Susan