PEDTM 12: Radioactive
I think the most frustrating radiation side effect I'm having right now, other than perhaps the constant state of fatigue, is the sunburn-like effect that stretches across the skin of my abdomen. It's now at the point where wearing clothes makes my skin hurt, but since I'm not about to go around au naturel, I'm kind of stuck with it. Sigh. :( I'll be glad to be done--I have thirteen more treatments unless they increase my radiation dosage to bring that down, but my oncologist isn't certain if she wants to do that yet since she's trying to keep my side effects as low as possible.
Radiation itself is weird. It takes about half an hour every weekday morning; I go in, lie down on a table that they raise up after they line my radiation tattoos up with a measuring grid projected on my skin, and a glorified x-ray machine circles around me, at first taking actual x-rays that the techs use to make sure I'm in the right position. (Because hell if I want to have them radiate the wrong part of my body.) Radiation itself is super-short. The machine rotates into three positions, humming and buzzing, while I just stare up at the ceiling, arms lifted above my head and trying to stay as perfectly still as possible. (Which is harder than it might seem at times.)
Above the machine they've painted the ceiling to look like the night sky and set LED "stars" into constellation formats in it. My favourite one is over on the left hand side; it looks remarkably like (though not identical to) the Draco constellation, and it twinkles at me every morning. I'm really terribly fond of it. It's gotten me through some mornings when I just didn't think I could lie there and deal with all of this, mornings when my entire body wants nothing more than to throw myself off the table and scamper out of the room. Maybe that's a little silly--or a lot silly, really--but seeing those stars that I associate with the Draco that resides in my head and heart calms me down and makes me feel like maybe I can actually get through treatment without getting overwhelmed.
Thinking about Marie Curie helps too, oddly. I've been fascinated by Marie since I was a kid and read my first biography of her. I'm much more of a humanities girl than a scientist, but there's something about her pursuit of radiation that I found inspiring and tragic and heroic and human. And now I'm really grateful to her. Without Marie Curie I don't know where I'd be right now, so to her shade I'd like to say merci beaucoup.
Anyway. I meant to get back to the Snowflake Challenge, but I guess my brain needed to talk about radiation tonight. Ah well. Apologies for that; more interesting subject material tomorrow, I hope.
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This entry was originally posted at http://femmequixotic.dreamwidth.org/951472.html where there are currently
comments. You can comment here or there using OpenID.
Radiation itself is weird. It takes about half an hour every weekday morning; I go in, lie down on a table that they raise up after they line my radiation tattoos up with a measuring grid projected on my skin, and a glorified x-ray machine circles around me, at first taking actual x-rays that the techs use to make sure I'm in the right position. (Because hell if I want to have them radiate the wrong part of my body.) Radiation itself is super-short. The machine rotates into three positions, humming and buzzing, while I just stare up at the ceiling, arms lifted above my head and trying to stay as perfectly still as possible. (Which is harder than it might seem at times.)
Above the machine they've painted the ceiling to look like the night sky and set LED "stars" into constellation formats in it. My favourite one is over on the left hand side; it looks remarkably like (though not identical to) the Draco constellation, and it twinkles at me every morning. I'm really terribly fond of it. It's gotten me through some mornings when I just didn't think I could lie there and deal with all of this, mornings when my entire body wants nothing more than to throw myself off the table and scamper out of the room. Maybe that's a little silly--or a lot silly, really--but seeing those stars that I associate with the Draco that resides in my head and heart calms me down and makes me feel like maybe I can actually get through treatment without getting overwhelmed.
Thinking about Marie Curie helps too, oddly. I've been fascinated by Marie since I was a kid and read my first biography of her. I'm much more of a humanities girl than a scientist, but there's something about her pursuit of radiation that I found inspiring and tragic and heroic and human. And now I'm really grateful to her. Without Marie Curie I don't know where I'd be right now, so to her shade I'd like to say merci beaucoup.
Anyway. I meant to get back to the Snowflake Challenge, but I guess my brain needed to talk about radiation tonight. Ah well. Apologies for that; more interesting subject material tomorrow, I hope.
------------------
This entry was originally posted at http://femmequixotic.dreamwidth.org/951472.html where there are currently
comments. You can comment here or there using OpenID.