Baaaaaahhhhh!!!

Last Thursday I started radiation.  On Wednesday and then Thursday before radiation, I spent a good hour on the table in the radiation room. The technicians moved me into different positions, sometimes making miniscule adjustments, so that I was in precisely the right spot.

Radiation is directed at the areas where cancer has been found—so, the tumor site, the nodes under my arms, and the nodes in my internal mammary chain. It is those internal nodes that are the most difficult to reach, as they are under my sternum, and above my lungs. They are also the most important to hit with radiation, as we did not remove them during surgery. So while we assume they are cancer free, we could not confirm that as we did with the nodes that we took out during surgery.

Dr. Halberg (and her fantastic team) spent a lot of time calculating the exact position for me to be in so that the internal nodes would be hit with radiation, while also minimizing the radiation that would touch my lungs. The calculations are so complex that they have a physicist on staff to help them figure this out. Amazing.

On Thursday, the calculations worked, and I got my first treatment. This entailed a few minutes more on the table while a large machine whirred and buzzed a bit next to me. Then it was over. I just need to do that every weekday until April 30 and I’m done.

One of the side effects of radiation is that my skin may get burned. To help protect my skin, the nurse at Dr. Halberg’s office, Jana, gave me a large tub of lanolin to put on my skin twice a day. For those of you that don’t know what lanolin is-it is a wax or fat (depending who you talk to) that is extracted from sheep’s wool. It is extremely thick, sticky and yes—I now smell just like a sheep.

Anyone watch Frozen Planet last night? Josie did! She was especially enamored with the wolf pups.