Radiation

Happy new year! After a six-week break from treatment, I started radiation last week. It sounds daunting, but it's not a big deal. The most overwhelming part of it is that I have to drive to the hospital in Boston five days a week for six weeks. I purposely scheduled my appointments for 11 a.m. to avoid traffic, so it really hasn't been too bad so far. The drive is about 30-40 minutes.

Once I get to the hospital, I check myself in with a card imprinted with a bar code, and then I go to the dressing room to change into a robe from the waist up. Then it's on to the waiting room. For the first six treatments, I was called immediately, but yesterday and today I had to wait for about 45 minutes.

In the treatment room, all I have to do is lie down and stay still for about ten minutes. No nausea, no mood swings, no needles. Well, there were some needles involved before radiation started, but not in the way you'd think. I had a couple of appointments in which the technicians (if that's the right title for them) figured out exactly what position I'd need to be in. It's a mystery to me how they could know, but there are lasers and measuring tapes involved. Then they gave me a few tiny pinprick tattoos. (And no, I'm not going to connect the dots into a full-fledged tattoo when this is over, but that thought has crossed my mind.) These tattoos help the technicians align me at each appointment. After they position me, the techs go into a little room and operate a machine that moves around me and produces radiation. Imagine getting X-rays at the dentist, but the room and the machinery are much bigger, you're lying down, and you're partially naked. Two or three days a week the techs lay a wet towel over me, to disperse the radiation, I think they said. At first it feels great because it's warm. But it quickly cools off. And then for the last bit of radiation they come in and remove the towel, so I'm a bit chilly. When I'm finished, I have a slightly wet gown to wrap around me. Fortunately, I go straight to the changing room from there.

The waiting room is an interesting place. I see most of the same people every day, and I hear conversations about illnesses ("What kind do you have?" is a common opening line). Some of these discussions seem to have an element of one-upmanship ("I'll see your breast cancer and raise you a colorectal"). I guess it's just human nature to want to share one's illness story. Today the woman sitting next to me struck up a conversation. She began by asking me if I usually have to wait a long time--she'd just started radiation a couple of days ago--and soon she was telling me her story, which is a lot worse than mine. I couldn't even compete.