Dr. Radiance or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Learned to Love Radiation

Did you get the Dr. Strangelove allusion? You know the movie where Peter Sellers is riding the bomb?

I’m half-way through radiation for my right side (15 out of 30). It doesn’t hurt yet (thank goodness) but when I bend at the waist it feels like a sunburn.

I’m an expert on getting radiation treatment. How many people do you know who have gotten 89 radiation and/or proton treatments? I often read how people are lamenting their 20.

I thought I’d give you (my audience) an idea of what a radiation treatment is like since most (including me before cancer) don’t know what a radiation treatment is like.

By the way you can also read my husband’s analytical approach to radiation in the section under “a second opinion.”

My radiation on the right this time takes about 15 minutes total. The receptionist checks me in, and they give me a robe when I come in for my appt. I take off my top and leave on skirt or jeans. At no time do I feel very embarrassed (the two excellent techs who line me up on the table are women. Hi Jordan and Taryn!) . When they treated my left side in 2017 I had to hold my breath to protect my heart for part of the treatment.

Normally I lie on the table, arms above head, and turn my head to the left away from the radiation and the techs leave the room to start machine. Every other day they put a heavy pad on my chest to increase the radiation in that area. (a bolus). A few days before actual treatment, through a “sim” (short for simulation), the techs have marked my skin with markers and taken photos to know how to line up the beams. When I got proton treatment, the techs marked my skin with small tattoos to line up that beam (fairly painless—a little sting in about 6 areas).

Of course the physicists and docs and dosemetrists have drawn up the best plan to cover the area with photons.

After a few minutes we’re done! No it didn’t hurt and it won’t hurt til about end of 3rd-4th week, it depends on how sensitive the patient’s skin is.

I used aquaphor/radiagaard for regular radiation and silverdene for the bad burns with protons. I needed pain drugs with protons.

Proton treatment was more difficult. I had that when my cancer came back on my skin August -October 2019. They hit my skin hard and by the 38th treatment my underarms were oozing and newly grafted back skin over my heart was dark red/blackish. I have some serious scar tissue from those burns, which limits my range of motion., I’m hoping to improve that with physical therapy.

Feeling a bit overwhelmed…I think more cancer has shown up. When I have time and know more, I’ll catch you later!