My Job: Hold Very Still
Dec. 14th -- radiation treatment number 21
It isn't always easy -- the other day I had an itch on my face and I was twisting and contorting it trying to ease the itchiness, I must have looked like "Mr. Bean". I completely wasn't thinking that the RT's are always watching me through a camera when they are not in the room with me -- what a show for them!
Today I had a yoga class; my teacher had breast cancer and went through radiation last summer. She knew all the RTs and staff and told me to say hello to everyone there. It's a small world -- and breast cancer is one of those threads that can connect women.
2005 -- and the end of treatment
My last treatment is scheduled for Jan. 3, 2005. I had hoped that I would be able to finish treatment in 2004, and my support group said it was silly to have just one treatment scheduled in 2005, and that they ought to be able to double up -- give me two doses on one day. So I asked Dr. Brown about this. Her answer was not what I had expected. The last five treatments are called "boosts," they are just to the scar area. She said, (I paraphrase here) "Oh, we'll just give you one treatment less -- it won't matter. Because your cancer is inflammatory, what we are really concerned about is the chest wall, and not the scar. Five boosts is just an arbitrary number, we don't really know that five are better than four, we just know that five shouldn't hurt you."
Now this certainly made sense and was very reasonable, and also is one of the common features of treatments -- that there are a lot of unknowns and thus there can be a lot of variables. But it also made me uneasy that I would be missing a treatment. And if I did have a recurrence, later down the road, I know I would say to myself, "Oh no, I shouldn't have talked Dr. Brown out of giving me that last treatment." In short the unease I felt at having one less treatment outweighs the relief I would feel at being done on Dec. 30. So I think I'll go back to having my last treatment on Jan. 3 -- it's not like I'm going anywhere.
It isn't always easy -- the other day I had an itch on my face and I was twisting and contorting it trying to ease the itchiness, I must have looked like "Mr. Bean". I completely wasn't thinking that the RT's are always watching me through a camera when they are not in the room with me -- what a show for them!
Today I had a yoga class; my teacher had breast cancer and went through radiation last summer. She knew all the RTs and staff and told me to say hello to everyone there. It's a small world -- and breast cancer is one of those threads that can connect women.
2005 -- and the end of treatment
My last treatment is scheduled for Jan. 3, 2005. I had hoped that I would be able to finish treatment in 2004, and my support group said it was silly to have just one treatment scheduled in 2005, and that they ought to be able to double up -- give me two doses on one day. So I asked Dr. Brown about this. Her answer was not what I had expected. The last five treatments are called "boosts," they are just to the scar area. She said, (I paraphrase here) "Oh, we'll just give you one treatment less -- it won't matter. Because your cancer is inflammatory, what we are really concerned about is the chest wall, and not the scar. Five boosts is just an arbitrary number, we don't really know that five are better than four, we just know that five shouldn't hurt you."
Now this certainly made sense and was very reasonable, and also is one of the common features of treatments -- that there are a lot of unknowns and thus there can be a lot of variables. But it also made me uneasy that I would be missing a treatment. And if I did have a recurrence, later down the road, I know I would say to myself, "Oh no, I shouldn't have talked Dr. Brown out of giving me that last treatment." In short the unease I felt at having one less treatment outweighs the relief I would feel at being done on Dec. 30. So I think I'll go back to having my last treatment on Jan. 3 -- it's not like I'm going anywhere.
posted by Liane | 1:16 PM
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