Thursday, February 8, 2007

The boys and I are glowing in the dark! Today was the first day of Radiation Therapy. We started out doing the x-rays that we would have done yesterday. The x-rays took awhile and man was the saliva glans working in overtime. It is extremely difficult to swallow with a mouth piece and a mask that starts mid breast and up holding you very tightly to the board! Got a little anxious there a couple of times...should have taken that ativan! Today they took x-rays from all 5 angles that they are shooting from and once a week they will take 2 x-rays for a quality assurance check of my alignment. Nothing really medically used with them but getting me aligned with the machine. So between the lasers pointing at the tattoos, the balls on the frame of the bit block mouth piece and the x-rays, they are very precise in what they are doing.

After they were done with the x-rays they started my first radiation therapy. They are shooting from 5 different angles and hitting each angle twice. One of the angles gets about 7 seconds, another gets around 12 seconds and the other 8 times are 20 to 30 seconds. Doesn't really take to long at all.

After they were done Tod showed me all about the machines and answered all my questions. Then we headed out to the waiting area and Andrea and I went to talk with Phyllis, Dr. Leonard's nurse. These people are incredible and spend as much time as you need to answer all the questions and concerns. Phyllis is a great help and has answered more questions than we can even remember the answers too! Today she gave us a cook book for cancer patients, a thermal lunch sack with Boost and other good calorie stuff in it and tons of advice, it really helped both of us.

The nose acne is drying out and now it's all just crusty! Earl is a bit sore tonight, not sure if it was the mask or the RT or maybe both!?!?

I'm going to have Andrea take some pictures of the RT room and me in my mask strapped down to the board tomorrow at my session so I can put them up on the blog so everyone can see.