Happy Belated Valentine's Day everyone!!! Hope you all had a very SWEET day!
I'm excited to say that I now have 17 radiation treatments down and only 14 more to go and how appropriate to have 14 left on the 14th of February. I'm extremely excited and so ready for this chapter in my life to be over as well. I hate to rush time but when this entire process is over I will have been dealing with/fighting cancer for the last 8 months. I know there are many others who suffer much longer but for me I'm ready to get up, brush off the wounds, focus on getting healthy and start enjoying my life again.
Overall, my radiation treatments are going well. As I mentioned in a previous e-mail, I go 5 days a week, Monday - Friday. It's a quick procedure. I'm really only on the table for a max of 5 min so it's not so bad. There are times when the therapist's are behind schedule and my 4pm appointment gets pushed back to 4:30 which doesn't get me home till 5:30. The days I don't work, Tuesdays and Fridays, I try to make my appointment in the morning so I don't have to deal with rush hour traffic. Every Tuesday I get X-rays before my treatment and meet with the doctor afterward. So Tuesdays are about 45 min longer than the other days. So far, the doctor has been really pleased with my skin and how my body is reacting to the radiation. I'm of course getting more and more tired from the radiation and my skin is getting more and more red. It's slightly painful and itchy. Calendula (first aid lotion) makes my skin feel so much better.
This week has been a bit more challenging. On Wednesday I had a kink in my back that wouldn't go away. So it made it very difficult to lay down on the machine as well as get up. The therapists had to help me. On Thursday I took off work and the therapist just happen to call me to come in early for radiation. Once they had me all lined up on the machine, the hospital had a power outage and the machine was zapped. So they sent me home only to come back a few hours later. That was a little frustrating since I was tired.
Now that it's the weekend, the fatigue has really set in. All I feel like doing is lying down or sleeping. This is so hard for me. I don't really want to rest but my body can't handle a huge amount of activity. So, Ken's mom came down to help out. She's been taking care of Cody so I can rest, which has been a huge help.
Attached are 2 photos. One of my radiation machine and the other of me, after a treatment in the dressing room. The photos were taken January 31st.
By the way, since I was so slow getting this e-mail out, I now officially have 20 radiation treatments down and only 11 more to go.
Love to you all,
Jen
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