I've been done with chemo just over a month - yippee. I still feel giddily happy that I don't need to go back and put that bag of crap in my arm again.
The respite, however, is slightly clouded by the fact that I started radiation a week ago, and am now going in to have my boob and armpit subjected to the cancer death ray every weekday for three weeks. The three weeks part is the good news: I am in a study wherein the current standard of care for my type of cancer - a six week regimen - is condensed into half the time. They tell me that even though the dose is twice the strength, people in the study are not experiencing noticeably more severe side effects.
My report? So far, so good.
I got my 6th dose today and I still am not noticing any change in my skin tone, visually or otherwise.
Of course it helps that about 10 days before starting I began to obsessively slather the area that was going to get radiated with a natural local-made balm that my amazing bodyworker gave to me. It was created for the chapped, cracked hands of outdoorsypeople in this dry state and includes pine sap, beeswax, honey, calendula and olive oil. It's thick as gear grease and has kept the area nicely lubricated since.
My daily dose of fun is at 4:00, so I leave work around 3:30 and make the 20 minute drive to the Huntsman. The visit is barely 20 minutes from the time I pull into the garage to when I am on my way back out. The actual blasts of radiation are about 25-30 seconds each, from three different angles. You lay on a gurney and put your arms over your head into a mold that was made around your own body, the techs leave the room and the gurney raises about 4 feet into the air and the machine sort of rotates around your head making whirring and grinding noises, with an annoying whiny tone when the actual radiation is being "shot" at you.
I usually close my eyes and think about other things during the session, but today I noticed that there was a puppy and a kitten sticker on the part of the machine that floats right over your head, a reminder that there are kids going through this shit, too.
A few have asked what it actually feels like. The first couple of rounds I perceived the hair on my body standing up, like I was near a magnetizing field. Then after it was over for about an hour I felt like I had just the slightest sense of a tight neck and throat. But I don't feel much beyond that. They say I will become tired, but I haven't really noticed much of a change yet. And it's hard to know if I am *more tired* than usual, because I am still not back to my "usual". Starting radiation three weeks after my last chemo I certainly haven't had a chance to recover my full energy.
This past weekend Sawyer and I took the dog (and my new sideburns) on a 3.5 mile showshoe loop in the Uintas, which should have been easy, except we decided for some reasons not to wear our snowshoes, and after the first half mile the snow was slushy and melty, so we skidded around and fell through holes and generally had to focus on balance with each step, so it turned out to be a pretty tiring jaunt. In any case, I didn't feel any more or less tired than hiking two weeks ago in Zion.
Just like chemo, they say that the effects are cumulative and it will get harder, but with only a week and four days left to go, I cannot imagine the delta would suddenly slope violently.
So. I will again timidly venture that I might be a lucky soul who is going to fare well through this experience, just as I did with chemo.
And honestly, a sunburn and some fatigue, with treatments done on the 5th?
I've got this.
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