Radiation Trepidation

The evil empire of prostate cancer likes the bones.  Especially, as my Onc [Oncologist] says, “the big bones”.  I guess that explains why I have mets [metastases] on my skull.   

Even in the early stages of invasion the bone lesions hurt.  Sometimes they hurt like hell.

One of the goals for improving and supporting “quality of life” is the reduction of pain and sometimes radiation can be that tool that is used to reduce pain.  Radiation has worked more than once in my case.

Radiation! Oh my!  Don’t they do that to fruit and we aren’t supposed to eat irradiated fruit?  Nuclear bombs are radioactive.  My watch dial back in the day glowed in the dark radioactively.  Geiger counters, dosimeters oh my!

Disclaimer:  Lesions on my bones are being irradiated not my soft tissue so results may vary.  Just ask one of my age old friends. She will vouch that soft tissue radiation is not for the meek.

They don’t put you in a microwave structure and zap your whole body hoping you will cook from the center out.  Being zapped actually requires something called “targeting” or “simulation” or “pin the tail on the donkey”.  Not totally sure what the first step is called but it involves this machine. 

                                        

Look familiar from my Scan 101 blog.  If you said CAT scan then…hell who cares if you were right or not.  Armed with a bone scan, an image I may or may not share sometime in the future, they CAT scan the “target” area in an effort to dial in where the radiation is going to go.

Once they get you where they want you the really cool stuff happens.  They come in and tattoo you and take pictures.

                                       

Pretty cool huh?  While that is a tattoo on my body the techs, though kind helpful and knowledgeable aren’t that talented with the tattoo pen and if they are they don’t have time to be overly artistic [though some are pretty talented with a Sharpie].  The really cool part is if you are in competition with your daughter for most tattoos you can count these

                                     

teeny-weeny dots as tattoos.  Merely a spec on the land of your skin but somehow through photos, CAT scans and X-rays they are the targets that help align the targeting lasers.

So for me a couple days after “targeting” I go in for zappage.  If you are lucky you have a nice place to go to like this

                                  

and after a no wait at all you will be whisked away to face The Machine.

Admittedly I’m visiting a world class cancer center that is fairly new so when I say “The Machine” is in a pleasantly appointed room where today “K” the tech chose Motown for the music du jour my point of view may be skewed.  For a fact though, the process is painless and far less scary than the disease that is silently coursing through your body. 

Once in the room I always kick off my shoes but that is the only shedding I do.  Today, because of the area being zapped I had to pull my jeans part way down.  I tell you this only because in the special waiting room there are all sorts of hospital gowns and pants available.  Don’t put them on unless you are told to.  The effects of cancer are humiliating enough.  Why walk down the hall way with an open back gown, white whatever flashing with each step, if you don’t need to?

In the room you lay down on the table and the techs make sure you are comfortable and gently align your new tattoos with the lasers.

                            

Once aligned the techs leave and close the 15” thick door and you are terribly alone in the room with The Machine!

I’ve mentioned this before but if you are fighting the evil empire there is no lonelier spot on the planet than this room once that door closes.  In this room there is only you and your disease. By yourself, no one is holding your hand.  No one.  By yourself.   Here in this room the fact that you are sick is silently but crushingly driven home.  The upside is Marvin the Martian does good things like zap the pain.

Marvin the Martian? 

Yep that’s what I call The Machine.  You see, whoever put the damn machine together apparently had a great sense of humor.  When they zap you they want you to lie very very still.  Right!  Try lying still while you are silently laughing because each 53 second zap of The Machine sounds exactly like and I mean exactly like Marvin the Martian’s ray gun aimed at Bugs Bunny and going “ZAP”.   

Too funny.

Talk to you later.