DAY 19: Breast Cancer Journal

Our Health

Discussion

October 17, 2009

Anonymous The Meadville Tribune Sat Oct 17, 2009, 04:00 PM EDT

Radiation

Chemo is different than radiation.

Chemo, the time passes and you are not so restricted that you cannot pick up a book or, listen to your IPOD or watch a TV show or even talk to someone.

Radiation – you are alone in a rather large room and listening to the sounds that surround you.

You must remain still and in the same position each time.

You watch the beam and the movement around you. Occasionally the machine starts and stops and moves around you and once in awhile you will hear, “Are you doing ok?”

Yes, I am here, just lying here and waiting.

Waiting seems to be the biggest word in my vocabulary at this point in my life.

It is not an inherent skill of mine, something that needs fine tuning for sure.

I once said the Lord’s Prayer 596 times when getting and MRI done.

I knock each one off the calendar after it is done. I have a permanent tattoo on my chest from where they marked me for radiation.

On radiation days, I would get in my car and race to radiation and then race back.

Early on with radiation I recall several people coming into the room and there I was half exposed as they discussed my case, Yohoo, I am here, could you either cover me up or turn away and talk.

This isn’t the Mona Lisa smiling at you right now.

I do have some dignity left albeit very little.

You may have seen it all before but this new body is a bit unfamiliar to me and I have not learned to embrace the disparity of the contours of my breasts and the divot that remains.

Near the end of my treatment, I had special medication to apply to my skin as it got more tender.

When radiation finished I asked to keep my gown, just as my badge of honor and it goes home to be stored in my hope chest with other momentos that no one will understand some day when I am gone.

I also keep that little black mark on my chest.

No one would notice but it is there and I know it. The tenderness remains for a long period of time, not painful just tender.

This was an easier path to walk than the chemo but now I wonder if I glow in the dark.