Everyone has been checking in - asking questions about whether I have any pain or irritation yet. The answer is: not yet!! I've been applying lotion several times a day as a preventative measure. Although I think radiation effects people in different ways, regardless of what one does to mitigate the damage. Some burn, some do not. My mother in law bought me a lotion from France that has excellent reviews... It smells nice and I consider my applications to be little moments of self care. They also can't hurt helping my scars from surgery.
And whether it helps or not, I've been drinking alkaline water and trying to stay hydrated.
Now what is radiation like? I didn't know what it entailed before lying down in the machine myself and it may also be very different in regards to what body part is being targeted.
I have four little freckle tattoos that were placed a few weeks before this started. They measure your body and make these marks easy to find, as I can imagine that would waste so much time finding those spots again and again for daily treatment. The techs always say "19.5" when I lay down on the table and adjust me to line up under a red laser cross hatch. I still don't know when the actual radiation is being released from the machine because there's noise and rotation and little metal pieces opening, closing and moving.
Imagine a frog on a dissection tray - that's how I feel on the table. I place my arms above my head (that's still a difficult movement for me, but it's improving) and turn my head away from my right side. They tape a sensor to my stomach, used to gauge how deep a breath I've taken every time they speak from the other room, "Take a breath... Hold... Breathe". If I cough or move or expand my lungs while the radiation is flowing, it will trigger an error and turn off. This is reassuring to me that they are trying their best to avoid damage to my lungs.
The whole process takes about ten minutes. I take many deep breaths and hold them... Feeling like I did when I was little, holding my breath under water at the pool; keeping track of the seconds with my father's Casio glow in the dark digital watch. I hold my breath and count, feeling that low grade burn in my lungs. The machine has three main parts, they swirl around like you are about to launch into space.
Every day I try to visualize something different and hope that these radioactive waves are finding any sneaky bastard micro metasteses that are hiding. I may or may not imagine that these cancer cells are wearing red MAGA hats and we're eliminating their awfulness one by one. I visualized that they were invited to a drag queen story hour and came to the realization that it's just one human reading to little humans and as they saw the positivity, removed their MAGA hats and threw them in the garbage. Wouldn't that be amazing? Just a little bit of progress?
Anyways, these vignettes in my brain help me during the process. My wishful energy for the world and my body to heal. What would you visualize? Laying on a kayak in the ocean? Floating in space? Picking cancer cells off with a gun at laser tag?
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