Radiation Planning

Today was quite a day. I realized that you really do have to separate your mind from your body. If you don't, this whole experience can be quite humiliating. I'll warn you now... this post borders on too much information. But, this is my reality.

The purpose of the day was to take the measurements necessary for radiation to start on Monday. And, it started with providing a urine sample... lucky me. I tried to argue that there was no possible way I am pregnant and asked if they could use the test from my surgery. Nope, they even make the lesbian nuns (their words, not mine) take the test so I wasn't getting out of it. Ugh!

It got much worse from there. I did manage to keep myself from laughing at the ridiculousness of it all.

Talk about feeling on display... they had me on my back with no clothes from the waist up while 4 people hovered over me, moving me into position, putting on stickers, moving the stickers, drawing all over me, and taking pictures (!) from every angle. Yes, there was actually a guy with a standard digital camera walking around me taking pictures.

Then they did a CT scan of my chest cavity while I breathed normally and while practicing "respiratory gating" (aka holding your breath). Does everything have to have a fancy name? They made it like a game. I had to wear goggles that showed me a screen. On the screen was a blue box toward the top and a yellow line towards the bottom that moved when I breathed. I had to take a deep breath to get the yellow line into the blue box and hold it. Very interesting stuff. Supposedly this will show them if this technique is going to move my heart enough to get it out of the radiation field.

Oh, they also reviewed the potential side effects from radiation. One of the side effects that I could experience is the ability to sense weather changes in the impacted area. You know, so instead of saying "I can feel it in my bones," I get to say "I can feel it in my boob!"

The last step of the day was receiving four really small tattoos. These things are super tiny. If you look in the middle of the purple lines you may see a dot. That is the tattoo.

They may be small, but it sure did HURT! After that experience I've decided that I won't be getting any voluntary tattoos. It wasn't horrible, and it was over very quickly, but I can't imagine having a large tattoo done. So I won't be playing connect the dots when this is all over. Darn!

By the way, my snarkiness last week paid off... the doctor said that he can reduce the number of treatments to 33 instead of 36 by increasing the dosage a tiny bit over the remaining 25 regular treatments. Yay! The 8 boosters will remain the same.