Signposts

This past week I passed the half-way point in my radiation treatment. I know this because they took my blood again to check the effects radiation is having on my red-blood cell count. NotherFrog can tell you the exact treatment number I'm having on any given day. (He's a number geek.) Actually, the radiation techs, who are now reading the blog, tell me that today (the 28th) was the 20th treatment. I've tried not to pay attention too closely because from what I've read of others' experiences, things can change. While the doctors say you'll have "about 30" treatments--not all 30 are the same. At some point they'll switch over to a few "high-dose" or "boost" treatments targeted precisely at the surgical site. The treatments now go from the tattoo on the side of my body and the other tattoo on my sternum. I can tell exactly where the rays hit under my arm and on my chest because the pattern is burned into my skin. The brown splotches are particularily unattractive--not that attractiveness is what matters--but that the ugliness of the body now highlights in a flashing-neon-sign-kind-of-way the damage being done.

Other women have reported "needing" 32 or 33 treatments and others have had to suspend their treatments at some point to let the site heal before continuing. So I'm unable to pencil in the last treatment on my calendar because it's a moving target.

Those who don't want graphic details should stop now.

Part of my skin has now come off (they warn you of this) so the open sore makes wearing a bra not recommended. Still my outlook remains positive. I just hope this insane treatment works. It's hard to imagine those women who had recurrences after their body was subjected to this madness. You'd think that not only would any remaining cancer cells be killed off, but that any future mutations of cancer cells would be told by the surrounding tissue of the horrors ahead and therefore think better of their defective division.