Fun with Radiation

October 20th, 2006

My radiation burns are stinging like the dickens now. Whatever "dickens" are. Despite the three times a day skin treatment of Aloe Vera gel and Aquaphor, the skin continues to get worse.

Today, the radiation oncologist looked at my skin and decided to change the plan. She's decreasing the number of whole breast radiation sessions and doing three extra "boosts" to the tumor area. Her hope is that this will spare the skin under my breast and arm from some of the damage.

Trivia for fellow detail folks: Each whole breast treatment is 180 centigrays (or rads). Each "boost" treatment will be 200 centigrays, but to a smaller, more concentrated area. I have received 3,960 CGY to day and will receive about 6,040 total by the time my treatment is done.

While we won't start the boosts until next week, the technicians needed to do the planning for it today. I like the radiation therapists and it is interesting for me to see how all of this works, so I actually had fun during the planning. I suppose this is why everyone refers to me as a "good patient!"

For the boost set up, they swung the table (the one that I lay on) around to a 90-degree angle and raised me higher. Moving the machine over my breast, they fit it with a block tray and electron cone. The radiation oncologist came in to look at the set up. She used a turquoise paint pen to circle the area on my breast that was to receive the boost - it contrasts beautifully against my hot pink breast. Next, the therapists experimented with positioning, changing my arm angle and schooching the table around, trying to get it as precise as possible. After taking pictures of the setup and making notes of all the settings, they let me down.

I had brought my 35mm digital SLR with me and asked if I could take a picture of the team for my collage project. Being the goof balls that they are, they posed like this:

Four radiation therapists in goofy poses

Several were interested in my SLR, so I showed it to them. I wanted to bring up examples of photos I had taken, but the only ones I had on this memory card were the ones of the potato bug. At least one radiation therapists shouted, "Ew!" when she saw the photo. The therapist who lives in my area just nodded knowingly. "Potato bug," she said.

Similar yarns

Technorati Tags:

Post new comment

If you are not logged in, your name will default to Rogue Pirate. You can replace that with another name. If you enter a homepage, your name will link to that website. Be sure to start your website URL with http://

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.