Catching some rays

It's been a very busy few days. I will share a bit about my first two radiation treatments in this post and do another post tomorrow to catch up on my weekend in Cranbrook celebrating Forrest's first birthday.

Rod refers to my radiation treatments when speaking of them to others as Laura is 'catching some rays'. It makes me smile so I used it as the title of this post.

The first day I showed up a bit early and was directed to a waiting area. Soon a pleasant looking guy called my name, introduced himself and took me to an office where he had a binder with my name on it on a table. There were a couple of chairs and I was invited to take a seat. I had my iPad with me and open to Facebook so I closed out of it, leaving my opening page which features my granddaughter Lilly smiling proudly after losing her first tooth, complete with a note to the tooth fairy. He asked me how many children I had and I told him four sons. He seemed puzzled and asked what their ages were. I rattled off their ages from oldest to youngest and then he asked who the girl on my iPad was. I told him that she was my oldest grandchild. At that he looked at my birthdate again and exclaimed that I sure didn't look old enough to have grandchildren. (I am convinced that Patsy has been bribing her colleagues to do this to make me feel better as it happened again on day 2 of therapy with one of the radiation therapists.) ;)

He then proceeded to go through with explaining about my treatment and the dose and duration selected for me, complete with pictures - inside and out - which I found little unnerving. The CT scan images were actually quite interesting to look at knowing that it was my lungs etc that I was viewing and seeing the care that was taken when mapping the areas to be radiated. The outside pictures were taken for positioning purposes and my face was thankfully scribbled over with permanent black marker. I was happy to quickly move on to the other pictures. We took about fifteen minutes and I was given some Glaxal base cream, a printout of my treatment schedule,  then taken to radiotherapy area 8 to change and wait once again. When I came out of the change room Patsy was there and greeted me with a big hug. A very nice way to start the treatment.

I was taken into an area I call the 'command centre' where the radiation therapists sit, there are closed circuit TV monitors and controls for the therapists. The treatment room opens off of this area and the machine is very prominent in the room. I was asked to put my purse and housecoat on the chair and then lie down on the table. The therapists know their stuff - there was measuring and marking and slight adjustments of my position (the therapists do the moving, my role is to relax and let them position me). I had some x-rays taken and then they placed what is called a bolus on my chest, thankfully after first warming it up on my leg. It is a piece of flexible material that simulates the thickness of skin. Normally the radiation is programmed to go under the skin but my mastectomy incision requires the radiation so the bolus 'tricks' the machine by appearing as the skin, then the rays hit the incision to destroy any potential cancer cells that may have seeded to this area from the surgery. Once they were satisfied with my positioning they left the room and a doorbell sound indicated they were leaving. The machine started over above my left chest and ended up on my right side by the end of the treatment. It didn't take long and I was done.

Next day was pretty close to the first day, they said they needed more pictures but it didn't seem to take as long as the first day. I did find it reassuring that they tried to start and the machine wouldn't let them, a therapist came back into the room, locked the bed, the machine was happy with that and treatment commenced.

I know it has only been two treatments but so far the skin is doing well and I am doing what I have been instructed to do to care for it. Tomorrow I go for the third treatment followed by a class on radiation treatment specific to breast cancer. Ideally I would have had the class last Monday but it was a statutory holiday. Wednesday's treatment is scheduled a little later than my usual mid
morning times as I will also go to 'review' with Patsy and my radiation oncologist afterwards.

Three weeks and I will be a radiation graduate!

Take.care everyone.