July 2011 rads

Hi, I am new to this website. I also go for my mapping on July 6th. I will have 6-7 weeks, Monday-Friday.

I read where it does not matter how easily you burn.. Some people with fair skin fare better than those with darker skin and visa versa.. I think it is an individual thing.

Yup, add me to the list!

I just finished chemo on Friday, and I'm getting scanned and tattooed and all tomorrow.

Probably starting radiation July 5th.

More of my story on my blog and youtube. I'll be posting updates.

Good luck everyone!

Me too! I am finishing chemo this week and will start radiation in July.

Hi everybody!

I just finished chemo yesterday (4xAC, 4xcarboplatin, 12xTaxol) and will be starting radiation in July.  I had my planning session on Monday (with a big discussion on whether to do the mammary nodes (in the middle) and risk munting my heart.  (I say, go for it!  We've tried to wreck everything else with chemo, why get all delicate on me now?)

(And I'll be having 30 doses. :-)

I finished chemo last week and had my simulation today.  I will have my first radiation July 6.  I will have 30 with 3 boosts. I was told today by my doctor that the worst was behind me. 

MamaV I sure pray that he is right too.  Reading all the threads about raditaion as really scared me.  I really like this doctor. He is so compassionate.  He also lost his right arm to bone cancer at the age of 16. 

I was marked, positioned on the machine and a dry run was done.  It only took a few minutes. I was told the actual treatment would not take too much longer.  I am so anxious to get started.  I want to be finished.

Merilee- Thanks for those words

Beautiful way to look at it. 

Well got to leave for surgery... 

HUH?! "Healing Light Beams" from....? :-O  Merilee, are you SERIOUS?!?! (nah nevermind, rhetorical question)

Ummmm...I appreciate your intent so thank you, but....with all due respect, no thank you. I don't HAVE any "spiritual beliefs" of the kind I think you mean, and I don't find the idea of  meditation tapes or suggestions relaxing. Sometimes my PT says things while guiding me through an exercise which could go on a tape like that: I wish she wouldn't but it is what it is, and PT is only temporary. At best it makes me roll my eyes and shake my head (i.e., "new agey wishy washy"). When I do the exercises at home, I just get through them by counting the seconds for holding the various positions and counting reps to make sure I did them correctly, and enough. To know where my mind is at, think "realist," "skeptic," "needs evidence, "cynic" and so on.  I know, many imaginative and creative people (and some scientists too; I used to be a microbiologist) DO believe in "higher powers" of whatever kind, but, faith in supernatural beings or powers is NOT a prerequisite to imagination and creativity. Dunno if there are any studies on that but I have some personal anecdotal evidence of an atheist and an agnostic who had extra helpings of creativity. LOL Before my stroke in 1993 which killed all the fine motor coordination in my left hand, I composed and recorded (and produced and occasionally performed seven albums of music. I played piano, synthesizers and 12-string acoustic guitar. A few years after the stroke I fell into being an amateur writer since I couldn't play music anymore, and wrote twelve sci fi fantasy novels. And don't ask how this happened, since I'm an ATHEIST, but ten of them are a series and the characters have a pantheistic religion to which they're extremely faithful. OK my co-author, who observes pagan spirituality, is the one who started them out with the basic religion, which I wouldn't have done, but once given the concept I ran with it...I was the one who fleshed it all out and invented most of the specific rituals to the various gods and goddesses. Go figure. But I used to have one HELL of an imagination. I wish it would come ALL the way back....

My Pack Rat (that's what I call my boyfriend LOL) is agnostic and has several patents as a mechanical designer -- betcha didn't know this but a decent grounding in physics, engineering and materials science-- which almost nobody automatically thinks of in conjunction with the term "creativity" -- combined with a good sense of how parts fit together -- mixed in the right proportions, is one of the main recipes for INVENTION. Can't get any more creative than THAT! LOL

Well since I take my reality black with no milk or sugar, and, since reality mostly sucks -- even without cancer in the picture, I need to take BREAKS from it when it gets to be "too much." I guess spiritual types would instead pray or meditate at those times because you believe God or whoever higher being can actually change reality for you by making it better or easier? I guess since I don't Believe, that's why I need my full functioning intellect and a good creative outlet -- so I can ESCAPE every now and then! My present escape has been good for the past five years actually. When  I hit 30,000 words into the 11th novel of my sci fi fantasy series, I discovered a computer game called The Sims (through a writing forum I was on). I tried it, got addicted and was able to use it to bring my own invented sci-fi fantasy people and their culture to life! I made my story characters into Sims and by totally hot-rodding the game itself with custom content (some of it which *I* made: I learned to "hack" game objects to make them do what *I* needed them to do). I've successfully created their homeworld surroundings and lifestyle, and am continually still making smaller, more streamlined, modifications to bring it even closer to the way I wrote it. When RL is "too much," I go live there with them for awhile. And speaking of reality sucking:

Yeah, chemo brain is unfortunately all too real! Even coming up on TWO YEARS PFC and also finally off the damn AIs (those are brain killers too -- consider yourself warned and be very, very afraid: they are almost as bad as chemo) I still only have 90-95% of my marbles back (and those need to be held together by Wellbutrin and Ritalin :-P) -- and by now I doubt I'll find the rest of them. Translation: my focus, concentration and intellect are mostly back (and occasionally I'm even having my "old Me" moments, i.e., flashes of brilliance or creativity), but I have almost no short term memory anymore and where I used to be able to multitask badly, now I can't multitask at all. 

Back to the upcoming rads....it is what it is, and I accept them without the sugar coating. But that doesn't mean I have to LIKE them or put on the false cheerful smile in order to get them or for them to buy a little more time.

Linda -- yup, my radiation oncologist told me I'll get tattooed at simulation. She had asked me if I felt claustrophobic in CT scanners; I don't and said so, then she mentioned I'd get a couple of tattoos. So I had to tell her that being scanned doesn't bother me even slightly (and I think MRIs in particular are cool LOL) but NEEDLES?! OUUUUCH I hate needles!!! There is no such thing as ANY kind of needle stick that doesn't hurt me like hell, unless I use EMLA cream or they give me a local (but then the needle for the local hurts almost as bad as the needle I had to get in the first place). I asked her where I should apply the EMLA cream before my sim, she showed me and I *WILL* be doing that! Of course it'll probably use up the rest of my tube to get it everyplace she told me they might be tattooing me so I'll probably need to request a new prescription from my PCP's APRN after the simulation.

I hope the tattoos are only noticeable to the radiology technicians who apparently need them. Besides the fact that I don't like needles, there's a reason why I never got or ever wanted to get any kind of tattoos on my body. To others they seem decorative bits of personal self-expression and while  I wouldn't tell someone else what to do or not do about "artwork" on their own bodies, I don't like them at all personally...To my eyes tattoos are ugly mutilations and I don't want that on MY body.  :::::sigh:::::

Well...off to the laundromat, with an iBook full of little simmies to keep me out of trouble. LOL