Another lovely day at the Cancer Center yesterday compliments of
breast cancer. (I pause and think about the astronomical amount of money
that we have spent this year on my surgery, treatments, and gas; and
the amount of money that we haven't spent because Josh has such great
insurance, thank you God!)
We went in for what they call a
"simulation" day. Another blood test to make sure that I am not
pregnant and we met with the radiation oncologist. The radiation
treatments I will be receiving (both proton and electron beams for those
science nuts out there) are to try to destroy any remaining cancer
cells in my chest wall and underarm or in the lymph nodes in my chest
and clavicle area. Studies show that a certain percentage of breast
cancer patients will still have a re-occurrence after chemo or will have
microscopic cancer cells that have traveled up to the lymph nodes in
your neck. Radiation will kill the cancer in those areas for a certain
percentage of women. (We hope that I am in that group :)
Part of
the visit was a CT scan with all these wire things and metal dots and
just plain old sharpy marker drawn all over my chest and sides. I
seriously was lit up like a bizarre Christmas Tree. First the
oncologist drew in red sharpy a big rectangle (think dot to dot picture)
and then, also with red a big cross hairs mark near my belly button and
on my sides in line with the red belly button x. Then black sharpy
joined the red sharpy to make lines instead of dots to form the box.
Then there was this yellow zigzag wire thing with sticky on the
underside that went near my neck in two places. There were these pink
sticker things, and blue and then what they called "bee-bees" and looked
exactly like something a kid would fire from a gun that got taped on
too. All this was so when I finally went into the CT machine the marks
would show up to sort of "outline" the target area, so they can tell
what is scar tissue and so that they can line up that machine that will
send the radiation exactly the same way every time. The techs made a
sort of bean bag solid form around my head and torso to hold me in the
same position (arms above my head, my head tilted to the right) every
time.
I don't know what I expected, I expected it to be emotional
but it wasn't. Part of it was the presence of a film crew doing a
documentary of sorts on breast cancer patients, part of it was that I
found the science end of things completely interesting and kinda cool. I
was calling the proton beams proton torpedoes and Josh and I kept
making each other laugh. I felt really tired by the end of the day, so
the day was definitely stressful, but not a bad day.
Thank you
God for another day to live, even if I lived it at the doctors. Thank
you God for another day with my family. I am grateful.
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