Boosts

I've had 3 out of 5 "boosts" and I'm glad to have the weekend off. The boosts really are easier. They put the template on me and draw the "map" on my skin, lower the machine to where it's touching me and fire away for about 20 seconds. Then I'm done. No more struggling to stay still with restless legs or itchy nose!

Then again that area is getting redder, so I am treating it heavily in advance. I am peeved that they didn't point out the two areas that ended up being the WORST for me. They are not areas that I would have thought would be affected at all. When I pointed them out and asked why I was red there, they said it was the angle of the machine and it caught the heaviest from both directions. So if that is normal, wouldn't it have been helpful information to give out? I had only been treating what I thought was the "obvious" location, directly on my chest. In fact, when the spot under my neck turned up I thought it was an infected mosquito bite or something, while it turned out to be blisters. I was putting antibiotic cream on it, which I suppose didn't hurt but I could have done much more!

So for anyone reading this that might be doing radiation, my worst areas are a spot under my neck on the left side (the side they are aiming at) just above where the tumor was, like right over the spot where you hold your hand for the pledge of allegiance; and my left side, beginning from just under the arm and almost all the way down. I wish I had known this in advance so I could have been treating it. I had been rubbing my chest with coconut oil the entire time and it is barely pink, so I do think it really would have helped.

It looks a little better this weekend, but they told me it would get worse before it would get better so it may still get worse. They said it would be a couple of weeks before it improved.

I am taking pain pills at night (hydrocodone). I'm not sure if it's a good idea or not. The pain relief is initially blissful. But it only lasts 4 hours and I am sleeping at that point so I don't take another. Anyway I don't think I would want to since I have to get up and function at 6:30 am, and I feel a bit drugged as it is. I don't want to take them all day for the same reason. The nurses think I should, but I just have too much I need to do and it's hard enough to have a clear head as it is! So I try to stay caught up with advil all day. When I am caught up it's OK. I use the silvadene twice a day and coconut oil several times a day.

I do wake up in pain in the middle of the night. If I am clear enough to think about it I get up and take advil. Last night I did not and when I was putting the cream on this morning I was practically in tears.

I don't know that I would ever do radiation again without a very clear reason to do so. In my case, it's "just in case" and there is absolutely NO way of knowing if it's helping. Since can also cause troubles on its own it could be actually hurting more than helping and again there is no way of knowing. So I can't even say "I did all I could". What I can say is I made what seemed to be the best choice at the time, and I guess that will have to do.