Day 133
3 down, 27 to go!
Well kids I’m 3 treatments into the 30 I need to complete my radiation treatments. It’s been rough week filled with frustration and anxiety. We have yet to have an appointment that lasted less than 2 hours and there’s no guarantee that Monday’s treatment won’t also be long. It’s not the actual treatments themselves but the planning and setup that are time consuming. Everything has to be perfect in order to target the correct spots and to protect healthy tissue and cells.
We arrived early yesterday and waited a considerable amount of time for me to be taken back and then I spent a considerable amount of time on the table being positioned and set up and Dr. Hughes checking in and giving the go ahead. I heard her tell the technicians that everything was perfect so I assumed that today’s treatment would finally be the 15 minutes I’ve been told they will eventually be. My right eye runs while I’m laying there and this time after the treatment it was blurry when I opened my eyes. It went away after a while and Dr. Hughes suggested I get Natural Tears.
I was wrong about today’s treatment being shorter. We waited more than an hour to be taken back because they were shaving something more down to make everything more accurate. Thankfully they did this without me being on the table so I was not constrained for that entire hour. Once they finally took me back it wasn’t very long at all until I was on my way home. My eye fared better today and the decreased amount of time I spent on the table and constrained made for a less stressful experience. I think (pray) that we are finally getting there and I’ll finally be able to get into a schedule and God willing all will go smoothly from here on out.
I’m only on treatment number 3 but thankfully I haven’t had any side effects yet and so far my head is holding up well against the radiation. I was reading another person’s blog tonight and she mentioned that there should be videos on the web of people having tests like CAT scans and bone scans so that people know what to expect. I think that’s a great idea. The biggest part of most of my fear was/is in not knowing what to expect. If there is a way to record my treatment and share it with you I will. I’ll talk to the technicians on Monday morning.
Thank you so much for stopping by every day to read and comment. I love you all.
With much love and great affection,
~ Carol Anne
glad you are getting there chickie
Me too Angel, me too :-)
Glad it’s getting to be a less stressful experience. Yes, there should be things out there for people to see how these are performed- fear of the unknown is terrible. I know I don’t do anything without Googling it first nowadays. That’s why you writing about it here and putting the links up to websites etc is so important. Good on you.
Thanks SC! You know I vividly remember walking into the MRI room and being like, Oh my God I can totally do this! All that worry and once I actually saw the machine I knew it was no big deal.