cause for celebration, indeed. i’ve made it through my first week of brain radiation treatments and it hasn’t been awful. i wouldn’t say it’s been fun, but i’m getting used to being strapped into the mask and it’s been overall relatively easy this week. i know it will get harder as i go but i gotta celebrate along the way. i did a hard thing. and now i have 2 days to rest and recuperate before doing it again.

things i’ve experienced physically this week: small headaches, thankfully nothing too bad and ibuprofen has been enough to control them; intermittent mild nausea, which seems to be better when i’m on ibuprofen which makes sense cuz it’s the inflammation of my brain that causes the nausea; other mild digestive changes, of which i’ll spare you the details; a little bit of itchiness on my scalp right after my treatments, but it goes away; fatigue has been hard to measure but i definitely have felt more tired after treatments and into the evening, but feel better after sleep and have been able to work just fine in the mornings.

the other stuff is harder to talk about and explain, the psychological toll. there’s just n unsettling feeling of yeah, they fried some of my brain cells this week. i feel a little slow in general. and that chlorine smell i mentioned that i smell as soon as the radiation starts beaming into my head is starting to make me feel a little nauseated on the table. it dissipates as the treatment goes on and thankfully it’s only for a few minutes, but yeah, i do not like that smell. it’s the smell of actively burning my brain cells and my skin and hair in exchange for *hopefully* damaging the tumor cells so they stop growing.

no changes to my skin or hair yet that i can tell, aside from the itchiness i mentioned above. i am starting to wonder if i’m gonna have a line of hair loss across from one side of my head to another cuz it feels to me when i’m on the table that the machine is tracking from the big spot on my right side, where it spends more time, all the way over to the smaller spot on my left side, where it ends. like it doesn’t turn off and reposition, it’s continuous, a smooth movement and i hear the sound and smell the smell the whole time. so who knows. i might need a very creative mohawk or other punk rock hairdo for a while once it starts falling out. lol

i keep forgetting to try to take some pictures of something while i’m there to have some visuals for these blog posts. but since there’s no metal allowed in the radiation room, debra has been holding on to my phone and other things while i go in. but maybe i can ask the techs on a slow day if i can take some pictures. they probably wouldn’t mind.

oh, and the last thing i’ll tell you… today mysteriously my appointment time got changed to 1:45 instead of 2pm in the portal, no notification whatsoever. i just happened to look in the portal for something else and saw it. so i hustled to get home from my last dog walk and showered/changed and eat something before picking debra up and going down there. we ended up getting there early cuz gratefully there was an open spot in the oncology parking lot today. so we made it, but i was hustling. and i hate feeling rushed.

i also noticed in the portal that monday’s appointment had been changed to 1:30. so when they brought me back, i asked the techs about it. they said don’t ever worry about what it says in the portal – it has a mind of it’s own. go by the paper calendar they gave me, which indicates 2pm for every day going forward except monday it does say 1:45. they think it got changed today just cuz it’s friday, and, ya know, wanting to start the weekend. and monday, well that’s a saints game – monday night football! since the medical center is really close to downtown and the superdome, traffic starts getting crazy down there after noon, what with all the tailgating and champion’s square and all that. so they try to move people up on the schedule to get done sooner. that cracked me up. of course, a saint’s game! gotta love this town. who dat!