Overall, I am ecstatic to have completed my 25 radiation treatments. I'm very thankful that it wasn't 30 (as it often is.) I'm ready to start to heal and get back to being a regular ol' person again.
Radiation - Week Four
It's kinda funny, doing radiation. I mean, that's why I'm here in Utah for 5 weeks. It's why I've travelled back and forth from Henderson, sometimes with the kids and sometimes without. Obviously, I understand that I'm doing cancer treatments. However, most the time I'm here, I'm just a normal person. I've been able to visit with family (Only falling asleep on their couches a few times during conversations.) I've seen a few friends. I hang out at Mom's house with the kids. I'm starting my 4th week now, and really, just now has my breast started hurting when you touch it. Before that, there was no real sign of radiation besides a slightly sunburned boob.
That makes it kind of weird. You are an active cancer patient living a mostly-normal life. The 'patient' part really only becomes apparent for a total of 30 minutes a day. After that...just normal living stuff.
Maybe I can help you really see the dichotomy between normal Christy and cancer patient Christy with a little rundown of my average day.
I wake up to Emmett yelling, "Mom! I come on your bed!" This is a declaration, not a question. He scrambles up and starts stomping around my pillow near my head with those crazy hard leg-braces he's been sporting the last couple of months. While trying to dodge destruct-o baby and recapture the awesome dream I was having, I hear Jason crawling up the other side of the bed. "Good Morning Mom! I love you so, so, sooooo much! I had good dreams!" Jason is always cheerful in the morning. Emmett responds with, "No! Jason NOT get on the bed! Jason NO be happy! Go away!" (Emmett is not a very pleasant morning person.) This fight only ends when I pick up both boys and head down for breakfast. We pass Laina who is past out from a long night of reading. She won't get up before I leave out the door. We do breakfast. I get dressed and jump in the car with either Mom or Dad or just by myself and head into SLC for my appointment.
The drive takes about 1 hour and 1/2 and although it can sometimes go quickly with good conversation, it is still becoming a tiresome drive. When I get to the Huntsman, I say 'hey' to my front-office ladies and head back into the changing room. I take off my shirt and put on my ugly robe and join the radiation ladies in the patient waiting room. The 10:30 radiation ladies (and one sweet little 6 year old named Addy.) are all rather chatty people, once you get past the initial awkward entrance into the room. It's usually pretty silent when I walk in, but after a few well-placed questions, these lovely women will talk your ear off. It's the only place everyone can talk about CANCER, hair-loss, chemo, tumors, treatments, exhaustion, and teenage sons without the pity sighs and compassionate, yet pretty annoying, sympathy stares. Instead we can just rattle on where we are in our journey and how much we'd love to be done with it. I kinda like the waiting room.
From there the sweet blond nurse in her twenties or the slender bald nurse-man who always sports some cheerful, pastel sweater (also in his twenties) comes to pick me up. We chat about my kids, my trips to Henderson or the weather. I'm still a person at this point. Only when I get into the radiation room, slip off my ugly robe and step up to my huge intimating radiation machine, do I become cancer patient Christy.
Behold the massive, 'Siemen's Artist' (pronounced Arr-teast, with a fancy French accent) - Radiation Machine extraordinaire. This machine takes up most the room. At one end is the giant box of computer fixtures that make the magic work. On the other end is what the nurses refer to as the radiolucent carbon-fiber table or simply, 'the couch' but what I like to call 'the slab.' Like the ones you see at the morgue. Because, honestly, that is what it looks like. A long, thin, cool black slab. I leave my sparkly shoes and my person-ness on the stool by the slab and hop on.
There I lay down with my arms and head cradled in my own personalized foam mold. I must look rather relaxed there, with my arms stretched over my head, hands touching and head turned to one side. Like, maybe I'm at the beach and felt like a good stretch before I hopped into the water. But, it would have to be a topless beach and I'm not comfortable. I'm chilly. The nurses do put a nice warm blanket over my legs, but that is when I stop existing. The table is raised and both nurses are now staring intently at my chest from about 3 inches away. I now have three small tattoos on my chest, one near each armpit and one smack dab in the middle of my chest. These are used to line me up to the green laser cross that will position me into just the right place. My armpit nurses now only talk to each other. "Give me a 2 millimeter roll." "My bag is lined up." "I need a millimeter pull." I don't speak. I don't move. I just sit there while I get pushed a little or pulled a little into the right position. There's a bit of poking and prodding and minute adjusting of my body. It usually only takes a few minutes before the tattoos and lasers are perfectly matched up. After that the table is moved up and down, left to right with the aid of rulers and, voila, the table is positioned for cancer patient Christy to get zapped.
On the odd days, I get to add one more very exciting step. I get covered with a layer of Saranwrap followed by a fancy gold chainmail on top. (Chainmail, like the stuff that knights get to wear under their amor. I'm that cool.) Once they tape this sexy getup on, and smooth out all the bumps and air-bubbles, I'm ready to be cooked. They say that the chainmail intensifies the treatment, bring the radiation closer to the chest. It's pretty awesome.
Behind me are about 5 different computers and monitors. I can't see them while I'm looking frozen to the right, but I know they are there. One has a snapshot of me laying there during one of my treatments in all my nakie glory, along with all my vital measurements and info. It's not my best look, but I'd love to get that identification photo on a badge to wear around the hospital. I find it to be an appropriate pose for laying on the slab of Siemen's Artist! (Think 'The Titanic' right here. Cue music...)
Above me, connected by a thick metal arm to the giant computer behind me, is a large-as-my-arm span circular contraption, encasing a large square glass. Instead of a monitor behind the glass, however, is what looks like a massive, open, zipper. Not the part you pull, but the actual teeth that usually locks together. I stare at the zipper while I listen to the chatter of the nurses somewhere behind me talking about my numbers and position or something super important. I really make out too much of their conversation over the louder hum of the machines reverberating around the room. The noise makes me imagine I'm in the belly of the beast of the hospital. Or maybe it's my imagination making me imagine that...
The nurses do a dry run of having me hold my breath so that my heart will be pushed down and my chest will be pushed up to just the right position. A red laser bathes my body with its ruddy glow to measure the exact height of my chest while expanded. That laser is attached to the ceiling to my right, so I get to stare at it a lot. It has VisionRT written across it, so, that sounds pretty important. When my nurses feel like I'm now perfect, they leave the room.
Their voices come back to me from a speaker that looks like an old rotary phone, also on the ceiling to my right. They tell me to breathe in. I do. Often my chest isn't exactly in the right position, so they make me let out a little air or suck in a little more until I have it perfect. Then I imagine them pressing a giant "GO" button and the machine starts to hum even louder. I keep holding my breath for what seems like forever, and just when I think I'm starting to pass out a little, the giant zipper begins to move and change shape until it looks like lips puckering up for a kiss. Then it stops and I'm told I can breath again. After a few good, rather desperate gasps for air, I regain my composure, still holding my ultra-relaxed looking pose perfectly in place. The giant zipper resumes it's shape and the giant arm slowly rotates around to the back of my body to give my other side a good zap. Once in position, I hold my breath again. I count the tiles on the ceiling. I try to remember my childhood phone number on that rotary phone/speaker device on the ceiling. Mostly, I try not to pass out until they tell me I can breathe again.
Then it's over. The zipper returns to its resting place. The slab is lowered. I grab my ugly robe. I am once again a person and helped back onto the floor to my sparkly shoes and my dignity. More chit-chat about the kids, or our upcoming next visit. I walk back to the waiting room, say goodbye to my radiation ladies and walk out the front door of the Huntsman Cancer Institute. Thirty minutes of my life and then I'm on my way. Back to the hour and a half car ride, and back to the kids and the schedules. Back to that normal life full of diapers and attitudes and personal crises that involve chores and fairness and who gets to pick the radio station, and NOT cancer.
For the rest of the day, I buy groceries, make dinner and shower. I'm tired. That's for sure. And a bit sore. Mostly, however, I'm just living as normally as I can. I try to focus on the normal chaos surrounding me and only indulge in my cancerous alter ego when I'm absolutely forced to. Soon enough, though, I'll be able to just be normal Christy again and the only things I'll blog about are potty training adventures and teenage angst. I can't wait.
