Radiation is my friend

Today I had my first radiation treatment for the lump thing in my neck. Don't ask me the name of it, I can never remember. On Tuesday my eye doctor asked me what it is called and I had nothing. I know the name of the cancer is Adeno Carcinoma but the name of the lump I don't have a clue.

When I had my planning session last week for these treatments, they made the mask I have to wear. (You need to wear this so that they can have a guide for where to point the radiation so it's the same each time.) They put the slab of warm wet pliable plastic over your face and shoulders and you wait for it to set and you wait for them to mark it up or whatever. They also take a CT scan, presumably to line things up, etc. Anyway, the fun part came when I was in the CT machine and started to feel panicky. I had been breathing with my nose only, so maybe that was making me light headed or maybe I was simply freaking out. The mask was warm, tight and constricting. I had my eyes closed. It was hot in there. I wanted it off.

That was not to be.

When I came out of the CT machine, the tech asked me how I was doing and I told her that I was starting to freak out. She sympathized but told me point blank that I had to keep it on for about 7 more minutes. She said she would stay by me and hold my hand for the rest of the time. Which was nice of her, and it helped. I started to breath through my mouth, as well as my nose, which also helped.

"They must use these at Gitmo," I commented, lamely. Bet she never heard that one.

When I was leaving she said that most likely my regular sessions won't be the fifteen minutes that I had the mask on during the planning session, but shorter. That was good news....

Flash-forward to today and what did the tech tell me? I'd be wearing the mask for about fifteen minutes. I groaned. She sympathized.

Her name is Erika, and she remembered me from 2007. What a sweetheart she is. I remembered her too. I also remembered Joe, who brought me in to the back where the machines are. Joe was also kind enough to let me hold onto his arm after my session because I got a little dizzy and almost tipped over (thank you big radiation machine for being there to grab hold of!)

I was surprised that today the mask was still as tight as it was last week. I thought maybe somehow it wouldn't be. Maybe it was the wet factor that made it so tight, but no, it was just as tight. When she said it would be fifteen minutes I sort of felt a bit of dread. I wondered for a moment if I could do this. Plus, before I came in, they gave me my schedule and I saw that I would be having 30 sessions. I didn't know if I could do this 30 times.

It was super muggy in the room, which didn't help. They snapped the mask on and right away I decided to make sure I was breathing properly. Deep and with nose and mouth. They took x-rays, so I think that is why it was fifteen minutes. I hope so anyway. I think the treatment itself is eight minutes. Thankfully, I didn't freak out this time, but it still felt like heaven when they took the suffocating piece of shit off.

Sitting up from the bed, which is basically a slab of some kind of hard back breaking material, I felt a bit light-headed... thus almost falling over on my way over to get my glasses. Tomorrow I will be sure to sit on the slab upright for a little bit before I venture off.

I've decided that it wasn't as bad as I was thinking it was going to be when I first heard Erika say "fifteen minutes" and when the mask first got snapped down. For the first couple of minutes I was thinking that this is finally going to be a test. This is really going to test me in ways I haven't been tested before. But now I have decided that I am going to think about people that have really been tortured. Those human souls that didn't have sympathetic technicians administering to them while suffering tortures of the unimaginable. Compared to that, this is playtime.