I was up early this morning to get to Abbotsford for my 9am appointment and was freaked out by the time I got to my car. The news had cars in the ditch and roads closed all over Abbotsford due to black ice and frozen roads. Thankfully my drive was easy. The thing about it tho is it’s about an 85-90 km round trip. For 25 days. Roughly an hour and a half of driving. And about $75 in parking.
They started out by explaining about the radiation and the machine, they usually do a simulation of the procedure but I stopped the tech from going over it. I explained to her that I’d been to one of my mom’s appointments last year so I knew the routine. Apparently if I get side effects they’ll be more fatigue because I’m already suffering with it from the chemo and blisters (she indicated I’d get these like they were a done deal) that can be dealt with by using certain creams. Nothing will be as bad as the side effects from chemo.
Then I had the CT scan. A normal experience turned rather unpleasant. They made me take my wig off for starters, then when they stripped the gown off me and saw the scars and the implant that still has a scab on it (funny thing about chemo, it stopped the healing process that was happening and my implant side looked the same 2 weeks ago as it did before the chemo. It isn’t completely healed yet) the CT scan techs, who looked all of 15, got real quiet for about 10 seconds. Then it was business as usual. I’m sure they’ve seen worse. They scanned me, made a mold of my upper back, arms and head so that I’m always in the same position, drew all over my chest with a black marker and tattooed me in 3 places. These are just little black dots that can be mistaken for moles. One of these days I’ll get a procedure that doesn’t make me feel like half a human, but today wasn’t it.
My first radiation appointment is Feb 2nd, my last will be march 7th.