3 Down 30 To Go

It's Friday and that means I've finished my first week of radiation. Sort of. Monday was a holiday and Tuesday was the test run, so really I've only had 3 of my 33 treatments. Only 30 more mornings of dragging my butt out of bed and heading down to the oncology center to be zapped. I get weekends off though which is nice for two reasons. 1) I get to sleep in tomorrow and 2) that gives a nice symmetry to my treatments as the 33rd and final treatment will occur on a Friday. I should be done at 9:30a.m. on Friday July 10th. Yeah, don't expect to see me in the office that day. There will be some celebrating to do. If I can stay awake for it.

I'm not supposed to be tired yet, but I am. I'm pretty sure it's because the office has been extremely busy--both with actual work (this is good; food on the table is good) and with the construction for the expansion of the office. And also it's because these darn hot flashes/ night sweats/ crazies keep waking me up. I have two temperatures these days: freezing, and rip-my-clothes-off-sweaty-hot. All of that combined with the fact that I have to get to the Oncology center before 9a.m and well, you have yourself one grumpy tired cancer patient. Probably not anything to do with the radiation just yet.

I did do a little more reading up on radiation and side effects. It may have been best if I hadn't. I don't need to worry about things I can't control. But if any of you are interested, here's a link to a pretty good summary from HealthCastle.com And here's a lovely photo of what happens to the radiated area. I picked a nice one, there were many photos of much more serious skin damage. I took this one to be the normal amount of damage. And see how large the radiated area is? That's the part that's supposed to stay out of direct sunlight. So now you know why I'll be in turtlenecks for the summer.

On a brighter note (although it's hard to get brighter red than that), I'm illuminated! Er, um, no, I'm a luminary! No, that's not it...I'm all lit up...okay, well that might be misconstrued...
What I mean to say is that my friend and fellow dog lover Katie Wider is participating in the Relay for Life on June 13 and 14 and she's lighting a luminary in honor of me and Seamus (he who totally kicked cancer's butt, even as it attacked his). Thanks Katie! That lightens things up nicely.

(Keep voting on the poll over to the right. Chris is anxiously awaiting the outcome. And Roryann Clements is running quite a campaign to make sure he doesn't get to cut it until December!! What does she have against Chris??)