The title of a Skeeter Davis song except…I am not sad, or blue and I haven’t lost my true love…just, last radiation today. Can’t believe how time has flown…I have been wrapped up in such a bubble of going to treatment…coming home and sleeping for six weeks.
I got to the floor and got called in right away…twenty minutes early too…walked into the room and gave a hug to “my big boy”. Thirty days I have patted the machine as I lay down saying, “Hi big boy”…closing my eyes and visualizing the cancer getting zapped…when it is done patting the machine again as I left the room.
Some out there are old enough to not only know who Skeeter Davis was (Google her if you want to know) but, to know the movie Fantastic Voyage. A diplomat is nearly assassinated. In order to save him, a submarine is shrunken to microscopic size and injected into his blood stream with a small crew. In one of the scenes, they take a ray gun and zap the blood clot and save his life. That was my image for the treatments…a Buck Rogers ray gun zapping the crap out of the cancer while I kept saying, “I am melting, I am melting”. Today…I got to sing, “Ding dong the witch is dead”!
The radiation staff from Dana in reception to Claire and the girls…and even Omar…to Dr. Hsu and Dr. Gable are the best in the world. I felt cared for and cared about. As I got off the table Claire gave me my instructions for my next appointment and she tapped my appointment card, “You come down and see us after you are done”. We talked about the fact that they never know the ending…all the people who come and go and they never know if they made it or not…that would be so very, very hard. I promised I would be back to let them know my ending. One of the therapists told me that when they met me and saw my attitude…she said to herself…that one is going to make it. Believe…believe…believe.
Where do I go from here? My radiation side-effects will taper off in two weeks or so. The “cooking” of my chest and back will stop and I can put my necklace back on. The radiation effects itself will continue up to six weeks. I see Dr. Hsu on August 13th and then he will arrange either a CT scan or a PET scan to see where the cancer is at.
Monday…I go for labs and then I see Dr. Keith and we will discuss the next phase of chemo. I am not handling well even the half dose of etoposide with feeling really, really crappy. I have been spiking a fever for the past couple of days and they did labs and a chest xray on Monday. Weird…I have never seen purple blood before and the urine sample was dark orange. No message at the hospital or a phone call…so, I guess everything is okay. However, feeling like this I don’t think my Neutrophils are up to snuff and we may have to postpone chemo again. I guess I will know more on Monday.
Merrily swimming away.
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