Yep you read that right, radiation is a really, really strong Xray. When I went the very first day, I expected beams or something visible shooting into my skin. Nope. Then I attended a Radiation 101 seminar and found out that is was xrays. The treatments were not painful. The doctor, dosimetrist, and techs worked very hard to make sure they were radiating very specific parts of my body especially because the cancer is on the left side, they wanted to be sure to miss my lungs and heart as much as possible. The first day, consisted of me laying on the "bed" with my arms over my head for almost 25 minutes (that was the most painful part of the process) so they could take lots and lots of pictures. That day I also got 4 "complimentary" tattoos (those were my doctors exact words. Guess you have to have a sense of humor in this business 😄). The next time I went in was for a dry run. They took more pictues, gave me another tattoo (see pic below) and made sure everything looked good for the real thing.
Finally on my third visit, the radiation started. The biggest surprise other than not seeing any rays was the fact that it all took less than 5 minutes from when the techs leave the vault (a room with 3 ft thick cement and metal walls, ceiling and floor) till they come back in. Below is a pic of what the radiation comes out of. The light is the radiation field.
Fast forward five weeks and I'm finished! Graduation day is what they call it.
It was a breeze compared to chemo. I dreaded the 25 minute drive everyday and learned to love it thanks to podcasts. I spent a quiet few minutes in the waiting room everyday (sometime is was more like 30-45 minutes), met some really nice people, had amazing radiation techs (see below for a selfie with my favorite tech), and got a massage every Thursday.
I did end up with a few burns, but I actually had very few side effects. The worst burns are on my collar bone
The burns show just how precise the radiation field is
and went right thru my body to burn the other side (if you look closely, that pattern looks like the light of the radiation field in the picture above).
When it was all said and done, it really was not bad at all.
Weird as it sounds, I'm kinda going to miss it. Well, not the burning of my skin
but you get the point.
