I DID IT!

8 sessions of chemo and 30 radiation treatments all finished! 

And then there was cake. Obviously.

My suspicion is that for most of you, this sounds like phenomenal news. Treatment is done. Cancer is smushed. Yay Liz. 

Unfortunately, (well, fortunately for you) most of you do not have direct experience with radiation. My situation is markedly less cheery than the completion of daily trips to the oncology office would suggest. As I was warned, the side effects of killing cancer cells with a linear accelerator have been getting progressively worse each day. If my body responds like most, my tissues will continue to become more and more inflamed, blistered, and tender over the next week or two. 

This is suboptimal for me, as my daily routine already involves a lot of ointment applications, bandage changes, and sitting around with my left arm raised to avoid friction in my armpit. I'm not sure how much more I can adapt. A medically induced coma sounds like a suitable next step. 

To illustrate, I will show you some photos. If you're the type to be grossed out by things like rashes and extreme sunburns, please stop reading. Luckily for you, it's not as yucky as other things I have posted on this forum. I don't have any photos of surgery scars, draining bodily fluids, or necrotic tissue. You'll have to scurry back to the 2010 blog posts to see those. 

I'll ease you in.

This is my body. The periwinkle oval near the bottom of the screen is where the tumor was. The green outline is the area of radiation treatment. You'll notice that it goes all the way from my collar bone down past the tumor site and from the middle of my torso around to my back. It's a big area for a 5mm already excised tumor, but they have to target all suspicious cells and lymph nodes and whatnot.

You can also see the tube from my port (Viper) snaking (see what I did there?) down into my heart. That Viper is a real interloper.

This is me in the prepping area.

There is lotion in all of the radiation rooms, because the treatment makes skin become dry and peel. One nurse told me "make sure you are putting lotion on 4-5 times a day. You can't over-hydrate. It's your new job now."

This me on the day that I went into the changing room and realized that I got undressed without bringing in a hospital gown. Oops. 

This is me waiting for radiation. I'm a bat. 

This is me in the radiation room. The black thing on my stomach monitors my breathing, as the radiation is dosed to hit my body only when I'm holding in a shallow breath. If I release the air, cough, sneeze, or wiggle, the machine shuts off. The thing on my chest is the bolus, which I have previously referred to as a giant jello jiggler. You' see that it is covered with a thin fabric and is lined up with the green beams for precision each day. 

This photo shows the radiated half of me versus the healthy half.

Internally, I have some muscle tightening and scar tissue forming, which I can feel (but they assure me is not new tumors). Externally, there are basically two areas showing the strongest side effect, my chest and under my arm. Both areas are getting worse by the day. This photo is my chest on November 9. There are a few small, but infuriatingly itchy lesions.  

The same area a day later

And four days after that

Here you can see that a patch of burn (technically called radiation dermatitis) is developing under my arm. This photo was taken on November 11. The early days of the burn made me so uncomfortable that I walked around like Mary Catherine Gallagher all day, in an effort to prevent my arm from repeatedly adhering to and then peeling off the tender skin. It was a cute look, I like to think.

Two days later it had grown larger and developed some blisters and peeling.

Three days after that, it was much bigger, and more layers of skin began sloughing.

So, this is me now. I'm in a lot of pain and there are very few ways to alleviate it. As luck would have it, however, the radiation technicians tell me that it looks "pretty good. It hasn't even split open yet." So there's that.

Time for more cake, I deem.