April 2010 Rads Group

I just looked at a map.  Kansas City and St Louis do look more like they're midway between SoCal and NYC than Chicago does, since it's more north it looks like it's closer to NYC.

I've never been to either KC or St.L - don't know jack about either of them (though I think I changed planes in St Louis once).  Will check into airfares.  No idea if they're expensive to get to or not.  

My earlier zits went away and now they're flat brown spots, like freckles.  Ny new zits are still there and itching.  I'll end up being really really freckled, on one side of my cleavage.  Lovely.

On the plus side, only 5 more to go.  

I had them give me photocopies of my cute sim planning pix today.  I guess it's the output from the CAT scan.  Maybe someday I'll put them together with my mammo and my MRI and maybe my brain MRI etc - do a collage or something.   

Today I brought in a black and white cookie for someone who was finishing, and a Johnny Cash greatest hits CD.  The techs weren't thrilled with the Man in Black.  Maybe I'll bring in opera tomorrow and really annoy them!

ONLY FIVE MORE!!!!

Edited to add:

Suepen - sorry to hear you finally had SEs!  Maybe they can give you gel pad things similar to what they gave me...I'd mail them to you, but by the time they arrived you'd be finished!! 

Into the single digits - yay, 9 left 16 done

Today they started using the Gel pad thing - are others getting this?  Apparently it will help the skin to burn a bit more?  nice!

Feels like the dessert stage of this cooking process

Philippa

xx

I'm half way there....15 done 16 to go!  I had a strange encounter yesterday.  I walked into the dressing rooms at the same time a lady did after her rad tx and she asked me if I was done and I told her "No, I have 16 more to go".  She asked to see my breast that was getting radiated....her Asian accent was pretty strong so wasn't sure I heard her correctly.   I said "excuse me" and she lifted her top and showed me her lumpectomy incision and said it was getting darker and wanted to know if that was normal.  So I opened my gown and showed her my lumpectomy incision scar and my node dissection incision scar.... that made her fell better, she said "thanks, I'll see you tomorrow".  Well, that's the first time I compared boobs with anyone!  I don't even remember seeing her before... I guess I should pay more attention to the people around me.  I usually check in and then sit down with my KINDLE and read.  I get soo... into my novels that I don't socialize with anyone.  Gosh! I hope I am not coming across as a snob.  I just want to get in and out of there as quickly as possibly.

I've compared breasts with women at support groups and get togethers and people I'd planned to meet for the purpose when I was Dr. shopping  - but no one's asked me in the dressing area yet!  I also usually just go in and don't talk to anyone except the staff.  For the most part, I just want to get it over with and am not in the mood to be friendly.  (Although there were at least 2 exceptions I can think of. women who I befriended, but they're both done now.) 

I have inadvertently walked in on women in the dressing room, though.  Sometimes they're so emotionally beyond they forget to close the door and I think it's unoccupied.  That's how I made friends with one of the two women I did speak to, after I was humiliated and completely apologetic by having walked in on her.

Feistybluegecko - They gave me a gel pad thing to use at home to help heal the burning, not to make it burn more.  Are you getting a gel thing to apply at home or is it part of the treatment????  I'm totally confused now.   It's in my refirgerator which they said some women find refreshing.  I'm afraid I'll just think it's cold.  We'll see. 

I'm totally frying, especially in the area where my V necks would fall.  I hope the skin heals, or I'll never be able to wear a V neck again.  And it was the neckline that looked the best on me, but then, that was before my breasts became mini-me's.

Weird that your radiated scars are getting darker, mine seem to be getting lighter.  But then, the scars on the other breast are completely keloid angry red.  Lovely. 

Ah well, 4 more to go.  Thank God.

Today was Guns 'n Roses Greatest Hits, which was another big hit with the techs.   I told them I was thinking of bringing in some opera just to annoy them and they protested a bit too much, so I might just have to do it.  A little La Boheme for rads might be lovely.  I'll see how my mood is tomorrow.

Hmmm.....I think it's a different gel pad thing.  

I don't think they'd use what they gave me during the zapping itself. 

But I don't know that for a fact.....just seems very unlikely. 

FOUR MORE!

I put on ointment before I went to sleep and woke up a few hours later itching like crazy.  Maybe I do better with just the lotion?  I'll have to ask.  Still haven't tried the gel pad. 

WHAT???  They brought you to the ER for a psych eval??????  

I'm shocked and horrified. UNFRICKINGBELIEVABLE.

I hope things are going OK at the new place! 

feistybluegecko, the gel pad thing you get during the treatment is called a bolus.  I get one every other day.  I'm still in the regular treatments, I haven't asked if you get it during the boosts.  I gather it's used in cases where there was tumor found close to the skin surface, to try to concentrate the radiation where tumor cells might still be lurking.

I'm 13 treatments in and getting fairly pink and tender.  I'm pretty apprehensive about what my skin will look like by the time I finish, but the short term effects of the treatment are still not as much a worry to me as the potential for late effects.

TGIF and today was the last of my rads.  I forgot to ask doc about the tiredness and the ache inside my rads boob, how long does that go on??

TWO MORE.

I was meeting someone for breakfast who happened to arrive early, so I ran into her on the street near the rads place, which possibly caused me to be a few minutes late.  However, the rad techs still didn't call me until 45 MINUTES after my scheduled time.  "The computer froze" blah blah blah.  I'M SO SICK OF THIS!

The poor woman I was having breakfast with may decide to have rads at the same place, so she got to come in and get a look around.  Running 45 minutes late wasn't a great selling point!

I slept with the gel pad thing on (probably like what you got Suepen, or is yours gel in a tube?) and the movement of my boob didn't really work well with the non-movement of the gel pad.  The pad kind of bunched around....didn't adhere evenly and would change the way in which it wasn't properly adhering as I changed position....   Anyway, when I took it off this am, I was worried that it was too close to zap time.  And then when I got zapped, I thought I could feel the zap.  I hope it was just psychosomatic.  In the end, and beause they were running so late, I still removed the pad 4 hours prior to zapping.....  ah, who knows.

I'm redder and redder every day.  I think some tiny amounts of skin may be coming off, I'm not really sure.  If so, it would probably be in the "moist desquamation" category.  And, because I'm doing rads lying down, my worst grief is in the upper inner quadrant not the under-breast.

So, really, does this mean we can never go to the beach ever again?

It's been really unseasonably cold but has warmed up again in the last few hours, so I was sweating on the way home.  Sweating is not good.  Sweating makes me itch like crazy.  I think I'll take another shower and apply more goo. 

CD of the day - Run DMC (self-titled debut)

I'm emotionally all over the place lately.  Elated because it's almost over, scared because who knows how long this will take to heal and what the long term side effects will be, angry that I had to severely mangle my breasts forever for a small amount of a noninvasive cancer, angry for the wasted year, angry for the ridiculous amount of money this has cost, angry for .... about a bazillion things, really really sad about my forever mangled breasts (that's the worst part), annoyed with myself for having eaten my way through dealing with this and will now have to deal with undoing the weight gain, angry that I REALLY DIDN'T NEED THIS CRAP ON TOP OF EVERYTHING ELSE, angry that now I have to do Tamox, angry that I'll be worrying about recurrence for the rest of my life.... on and on and on and on.

I'm definitely feeling the emotions coming to the surface as I near the end of this awful daily grind, where you've been so focused on forcing yourself to do what you have to do that you can't let youself think about it too much.  If that makes any sense.

THANK GOD I ONLY HAVE TWO MORE.  I AM SOOOO DONE WITH THIS CRAP.  IT'S SO PAST BEING AN INTERESTING EXPERIENCE....

TWO MORE.

I CAN SOMEHOW MAKE MYSELF DO THIS TWO MORE TIMES.

TWO.