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two out of six weeks DONE!

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i am glad to be done with this week and to have two days to rest and not have to get my brain fried. this was a harder week, or at least the end of it was.

i have been fighting nausea all day since i woke up. it comes and goes but it’s been a bit more intense when it is there. still hasn’t really affected my appetite – in fact somehow eating seems to make it feel better – but i have felt pretty crappy all morning while working. i just got back from my treatment and was hoping to pick up the anti-nausea meds my doc called in for me at cvs on my way home but they weren’t ready yet. i am also dog sitting for debra and karen who are vending at blues and bbq fest and cat sitting for my neighbor across the street, so i’ll have to go back out later anyways and i can grab it then.

the power went out at my place shortly before i left to go downtown. apparently a lot of midcity lost power i guess related to our high winds today and when i got to the hospital, they were running late because the power had flicked on and off a few times there, triggering the backup generators, so it caused some chaos. this happened before i got there thankfully and the power was back on but i had to wait a little longer than usual in the dressing room for my treatment. there was a poor woman in there also waiting who told me her whole story – she has lung cancer, which she’d already beaten once 7 years ago, but now it’s back in a different location and she’s getting chemo and radiation. she’d finished her chemo and then they send her to radiation after. she was groaning a lot, i guess in pain or some level of discomfort. i felt bad for her. they ended up taking me back before her, even though she was in the dressing room waiting before i got there. (there are two radiation rooms so i’m imagining she was going to the other one.)

so yeah. the longer i go through this, the more grateful i am that my actual time on the table with radiation pumping into me is only 3-4 minutes. the lady in the waiting room said her radiation treatments were like 12-15 minutes long. there is no way i could sit still that long in that mask so definitely grateful for that. but i am becoming more sensitive i think to the treatment. i really don’t know how to describe the feeling that comes over me when i hear the machine turn on and the beam is engaging with my head. it’s sort of like plunging into water, going below the surface, the pressure change that happens in your head. it’s a little uncomfortable but not really painful, just weird. it’s a wave of discomfort that washes over me but then i adjust and it’s ok for the rest of the time, as i count my breaths til it ends.

hope everyone has a great weekend! and if you are in the path of the storm that thankfully did not come to us, i hope you stay safe.

hump day

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today i awoke with a new fun side effect of radiation – dull nausea. i can be grateful it’s not full-on nausea that actually makes me wanna throw up, but this always-present-in-the-background variety of nausea isn’t great either. and it’s not something i’m accustomed to. i am rarely nauseated unless i have food poisoning or some viral bug that makes me so. and there’s really very few bodily sensations i hate more than nausea. but i’m guessing i’m gonna need to befriend this one cuz i think it’s with me for the duration, as it is a side effect of the swelling of the brain. thankfully it’s not so strong as to kill my appetite or keep me from eating. (yet.) it kinda comes and goes. and ginger tea and candies have been helpful.

i have been sending notes to my radiation oncologist via the portal about these side effects. yesterday i wrote him about the headache and he was glad i told him and just said keep taking the ibuprofen as needed. i wrote him this morning about the nausea but haven’t heard back from him yet. i’m guessing he only checks his messages in the portal once a day. i know he has something that can be prescribed for the nausea but i’m just not sure i really need it yet, since this is such a minor case of it. i’ll see what he says.

today was day 3. debra and i have a routine down now – i pick her up at 1:30, it takes 10-12 minutes to drive down canal street to galvez and into the oncology parking lot, and like 5 minutes to get inside through security and checked in. i like being early and having a few minutes to settle in the women’s dressing room. well today we encountered a problem we hadn’t anticipated: the oncology parking lot was full and there was already one car in front of us waiting for a spot to open up. this had not happened before. in fact yesterday there was hardly anyone in the parking lot.

we ended up having to rush to go park in the parking garage where we can get our ticket validated, but it’s on the other side of the hospital, the tulane avenue side, so it’s a bit of a hike to get back over to oncology on the galvez side. i guess we could have sat there waiting but who knows if a spot would have opened up in the oncology lot in time and i didn’t want to be late. we had to hustle but we got checked in to radiation with 5 minutes to spare.

i realized on this third treatment day that the amount of time i am actually under the machine getting irradiated is probably more like 5 minutes. not 10. not 15. i guess 15 is how they make the schedule, the time slots, allowing for time to fetch you from the dressing room, get you on the table, snap the mask on and get you all situated. i can’t wear my watch when getting treated – no metal allowed – so i can’t time it, but i didn’t take any ativan today so wasn’t altered at all and had a much better sense of time. this makes going there even easier, knowing the amount of time i’m on the table is so short. i count my breaths and listen to whatever music they have playing (old school r&b today) and before i know it, i’m done.

i decided to ask one of the techs about the chlorine smell that i keep smelling and he said it’s not an olfactory hallucination, it’s actually some kind of reaction of the radiation emission, something about ozone, i didn’t really understand it. but he said he’s heard that often from patients. so at least i’m not going crazy and my nose is working just fine. lol

so yeah, another quick in and out day, aside from the parking kerfuffle. i noticed right after walking out of the radiation room – well really almost as soon as they took my mask off – that i had an itching sensation in a spot on the right side of my head which must be where the radiation is going in. you’re not supposed to scratch it cuz the skin is already breaking down in that spot and you don’t want to irritate it, but i could totally tell. it’s not sensitive now, hours later, but in the moment right after the treatment i could feel the spot. that was a first. (i haven’t felt anything on the other side yet.)

only two more days and then i get a weekend to recover!