People keep asking me when my radiation treatments will start. That means I’m overdue to update the blog, because the treatments started last week.
The effect of the radiation is cumulative. I will eventually have a sunburn-like reaction, but not for a couple of weeks. They tell you to buy a lotion made from marigolds because they’ve discovered that marigolds produce chemicals that are beneficial for radiation burns. It has a nasty chemical smell.
They say the radiation might make me tired. Hey, I’m already tired. But the process is mostly painless. The first day, it was harder, because I had to maintain a really uncomfortable position for 45 minutes while they took lots of x-rays. This messed up a tendon in my thumb, of all things. But otherwise it’s been okay.
The machine they use, a linear accelerator, inspires a weird mix of awe and gratitude and absolute creepiness. It’s not something that makes a person think, “Yes, I should get naked and lie down in front of that.” Of course, it is amazing that they can pinpoint-target nuclear energy with such precision. But it feels wrong, unnatural, to be the target. You think about the hero firemen who got irradiated at Chernobyl. You think about the book Hiroshima. You think about that series they just ran in the New York Times about all the things that can and do go wrong in nuclear medicine. But now they are drawing on you with blue Sharpies. They have put two real but tiny tattoos on your breastbone and armpit and the therapist lights them up with red laser beams like she was about to unload a smart bomb in your general direction. She hides behind a wall of concrete and lead.
It’s time-consuming, an hour drive each way, five times a week, but the treatment itself only takes a few minutes. On Tuesdays, it’s longer, because you get to talk to your radiologist.
She asks if I’m still having any weird side-effects from the chemotherapy—which ended in mid-July. Yes, the left hand is still kind of numb, the eyes are still messed up, the stomach still has some issues. She says that, in truth, I probably won’t feel normal until maybe January of next year. Wow. Not even my oncologist ever admitted that.
But she says I’ll have some hair by the time we’re done with radiation, in November. And the brain seems to be coming out of the fog a little bit. All my life, I have drawn and painted. I haven’t drawn or painted anything since March, because the chemo truly messed up my brain. I couldn’t think hard enough to actually draw anything. But I’ve started sketching again. I hope this means the brain cells are not dead, they’re just stunned.
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