Friday Fictioneer – November 30, 2012

Friday Fictioneer - 11-30-12

I walked.

All day, I walked.

Without a destination, I walked.

Without counting my steps, without seeing outside my own body, I walked.

My thoughts churning, the tornado in my head skittering here and there, I walked.

Without food, without drink, I walked.

Without talking, without hearing, I walked.

All morning, all afternoon, I walked.

Without looking, without seeing, I walked.

Without touching, without feeling, I walked.

And finally, at dusk, the outside world, the real world, reality itself, returned.

The concrete, the lights, the sky, the color, the air, the sky, the people.

I saw, I heard.

I felt.

Radiation Therapy Journal – Day 24 – Monday December 3, 2012

Treatment Notes:

– They needed to do new films today, and have the doctor come in while I’m positioned on the table because I was swollen and she needed to confirm application of cell-destroying radiation – um, okay.  So my guys could see that on the films (that I was swollen from the treatment – if you’ve been reading me you know it actually happened Treatment Day 1 or 2), and I’m imagining the CT scans taken last week to plan the boost Did Not exactly match the CT scans taken a week before I started treatment because treatment made me swell damn near immediately!  But could she have believed me when I told her this 4 weeks ago?!  Apparently Not – she must be a fan of Dr. House (who gets the reference – 1st section?)!  But other than it taking a bit longer than normal – nothing much to see here, move along.

Doctor’s Visit:

– I’m inclined to believe that my ROnc actually did talk to my RSurg last week as she claims she did, for two reasons:

1) Mom pointed out that she said she did in my medical records and she couldn’t/wouldn’t do that if it weren’t true ‘cuz of this little thing called Medical Ethics.  Count on Mom for reminding me of the logical side of things.  But even more than that, I believe they talked because . . .

2) ROnc did Not try to push me into what she thinks I should do.  She walked into the room with printouts (as I had asked her to do) of the boost plan.  She explained them to me.  She then hands me and explains to me several study abstracts backing up her claim of the benefit the boost will provide to me And shows me the fairly good cosmetic results also covered in the studies.

She then tells me that she’ll do her visit notes with me and when we’re both happy, Then (electronically) sign them and print me a copy (to avoid having to void and reissue the notes as I had her do last week regarding my use of painkillers to get through the pain caused by the swelling (that she actually now believes exists) caused by the treatment itself.

She reads the notes right up until the last sentence, which I happen to see as she’s printing and closing that screen: “Patient will be given discharge instruction on last day of treatment.”  I repeat this to her and ask her to get them to me earlier (I don’t need things like that to be last minute in case I end up having questions, but she says they basically say “Call me if you have any questions or problems.”) and then she says she’ll have them printed and I need to bring them back to her, signed, on Friday, which will be my last day of treatment if I decide not to have the boost.

No further pressure – just giving me the information and letting it be my decision.  This is actually why I quit smoking (98 days CFT, BTW!) – because my RSurg Did NOT tell me to quit – she just told me what would happen to my body if I didn’t and I decided all by myself, just like a big girl who doesn’t have to be told, that my boobs and what I was going through to keep them, were more important to me than smoking.  I have to come around to things in my own time.  Forcing me there does not get me there sooner, it Delays Me Getting There.  Christ Almighty, she could have saved me so much angst if she had figured this out sooner!

Side Effects:

– lightheadedness, again – intermittently throughout the day

– So, interestingly totally normal blood pressure (107/62) this morning during my morning activities & the weekly installment of putting my doctor in her place.  Okay, so I seemed all calm this morning.  I figured I’d go with it.  Then midday I get nauseous and start to hurt, badly.  It’s actually my back that hurts, but I know it’s coming from stomach upset – this is a fairly familiar GERD pain pattern.  So maybe my Monday Morning Stuff manifested this way instead of as higher than normal blood pressure.  Okay, so I take a Zofran for the nausea.  30 minutes later the nausea was gone.  The pain wasn’t.  Took a pain pill.  45 minutes later no nausea And no pain!  Yay!  Time for lunch – soup, just to be on the safe side.  All’s well with the tummy for the rest of the day.

Copyright Ridingthebcrollercoaster.com 2012 All Rights Reserved.

SNL (1975-1980, 1985-Present): December 1-2, 2012

Who gets the reference?

Saturday:

[So, this morning I wake up all alone in my house.  Hubby is off doing a Z club drive and track day somewhere (to continue in the spirit of geographical vagueness) at a small airport in Riverside County.  Now, this could go on my “Things Cancer Has Screwed Me Out Of,” and it might, but honestly (as you may have noticed by the decreasing number of posts being published lately that) this fatigue business is really taking its toll.

So, Hubby is off for his day of driving fun (and please know that he tried many ways to get me to come with him – he hates it too that I can’t do everything I/we want to do right now.  He offered to wrap me up in warm blankies after breffast for the drive to the track day venue – and he Even offered to drive at the Back of the Pack so the drive would be Less exciting and I could maybe sleep during the drive between food and track day fun.  Now, for Hubby, who is a Very Talented Rider/Drive – Seriously, Please, Please Do Not follow him into the corners, ride/drive Your Own ride/drive, thank you, your cooperation is much appreciated, by you mostly 🙂 –  and who, like me, Really Likes a good exciting ride/drive – That is True Love!).

Well, it might not be to you, but it made me feel loved, and since this is my blog and my world to create – that’s what matters.  Along with the fact that Hubby mentioned when I go to the next one we’ll have to ask the kind club member who arranged for food to please make sure there is some available without barbecue sauce (I have a pre-diabetic condition that I’ve control by diet for 25 years now), and then mentioned that we could have stripped the skin of f a chicken breast and reasonably gotten me fed even today if I had gone.

Unfortunately a 12+ hour day with lots of movement and excitement on a Saturday is not on my agenda just now.  But a day to myself all alone in my house is.  :-)]

– coffee
– managing email (filing, handling to-do’s contained therein, etc.)

[I’m kind of embarrassed about how long it’s been since I curated my email properly, so I’m not gonna tell ya – let’s just say it predates my cancer diagnosis (by a fair timeframe), so I’ve got a lot of ignored/collected email to deal with – in multiple accounts because I’m an information organizer – fun.

The good news is that I’ve processed this cancer thing enough, or gotten through enough of the treatment for it, or just plain got bored enough with it – to want to exert some control over parts of my life where I may still have some (for me, that’s a good thing), and it’s manifesting as wanting to get my email back under deliberate control – one mailbox at a time.]

– brunch

[If you’ve been reading  me, you know weekend brunch is a thing with me.  Just because I’m alone doesn’t mean I don’t get brunch.  After all, I can cook, and today I only hafta cook for myself – no figuring out if we both want the same thing, and if not, figuring how we both get what we want, and who cooks it and who does the dishes . . . and all that shit.

Breffast/Brunch:

Egg in the Basket (which I’ve been calling “toad in the hole” even though the British version of toad in the hole is a different dish entirely)
– leftover chicken & apple sausage
– cheesy hash browns from the freezer]

– more email management

[Then 4:00 pm hit and I was suddenly tired – ‘course I’d only been staring at my computer and making decisions since about 8:00 am (with a short break for cooking breffast and another one for heading down to grab a mid-afternoon snack), and the brain is one of the most energy-hungry organs in the body, so no wonder I was tired.]

– reading in bed
– eating dinner after listening to Hubby recount his day

Sunday:

– coffee
– nap (a nap day is Always better than a non-nap day)
– brunch w/ Hubby

[Today He wanted what I’ve been calling Toad in the Hole, and he laughed when I said I’d had it yesterday!  But I made him some, and I was back to protein to eat before waffles (Hubby had gotten me some fruit-juice-sweetened, gluten-free ones and we were both wanting to see how they tasted).

I cooked breakfast for us both (just plain fried eggs and a couple small round brown-n-serve sausages for me), then I made um, breakfast dessert?  Second breakfast?  Dunno what to call it exactly – I had my breffast in courses this day, so it was time for the second course – waffles.  Hubby only wanted a bite to taste them and I ate the rest . . . of two waffles . . . liberally coated with both melted butter and maple syrup.  I must say, they were a really good, plain carrier for the butter and sweetness tastes that were the main attraction.]

– made applesauce

[Yeah, from scratch again.  If you’re reading me, you know I love my trips to Oak Glen (search this blog for that phrase/name).  And I was under obligation to make applesauce to be ready no later than December 11th of this year.  But that’s my own fault.  You see, last year a work colleague volunteered to make latkes to bring to the office to celebrate Chanukah.  Having so fallen in love with Oak Glen and its bounty of apples, I volunteered to make applesauce to accompany the latkes.  I made a batch of applesauce this big.  I came home with an inch of applesauce left in the bottom of the container.

So a week ago (she knew I had gone to Oak Glen multiple times this year and had bought plenty of apples), my work colleague (same one as last year) tells our office manager (right in front of both of our desks) “We’ll be celebrating Chanukah here in the office on Monday, December 11th, with latkes And Applesauce . . . (now looking my way) And Applesauce.”  To which I replied, “Yes, Ma’am, I’ll make applesauce.”

Oh, and Hubby’s been sending me recipes over the last month or two (every since we started our annual multi-day pilgrimage to Oak Glen), and every other one uses applesauce – yes, he’s hinting Broadly!

I do admit it’s my own fault, I did it to myself.  But, I could do worse things to myself than to cook things that other people request again year after year, eh?]

– hanging with Hubby, watching TV for a bit
– dinner with Hubby, watching Copper off the DVR

Copyright Ridingthebcrollercoaster.com 2012 All Rights Reserved.

Schedule: Week of November 26-30, 2012

Monday [Radiation Therapy – Day 19]:

7:10am-7:55am Drive from Home to RTher
8:00am-810am RTher
8:15am-9:00am Appointment with ROnc
9:00am-9:30am Waiting for requested med records to be printed
9:30am-9:45am Making additional acupuncture appointments

[Going from only on non-support-group weeks to weekly, for now, at least while I’m still in radiation therapy, and while Mo is in her clinical rotation (before she graduates and the next class comes in).]

9:45am-10:00am Walked over to lab building across the street (Please see “Seriously, this Woman Knows Her Way Around a Vein – I’m Naming Names Again“) to get my lab results that should have been faxed to me last week.  Yep.
10:00am-10:15am Drive from Disney Family Cancer Center to Work

[With a drive through McDonalds

for junk 740 calorie breakfast (eggs, sausage, hashbrowns, biscuit) – really, there’s only so much one can shoehorn into a morning and still get anywhere near a full-day’s work done.]

10:15am-1:30pm Work
1:30pm-2:00pm Lunch
2:00pm-5:30pm Work
5:30pm-5:45pmpm Drive from Work to Acupuncture
6:00pm-7:00pm Acupuncture
7:00pm-7:55pm Drive from Acupuncture to Home

Tuesday [Radiation Therapy – Day 20]:

7:15am-8:00am Drive from Home to RTher
8:00am-8:20am Wait for RTher
8:20am-8:25am RTher
8:25am-8:35am Slather boob goop/visit with “Dana”

[I had invited “Dana” to join me at Support Group, which is tonight, and then go to breffast tomorrow before going home to rest after we do our crazy crack-of-dawn cancer business, but…

… it seems her blood work yesterday is such that they didn’t do her chemo, and she’s been feeling like something’s going in her body just now, so she’s not really supposed to be around people until her blood counts recover – this all means that her immune system is compromised to a point where she needs to be Extra-Careful ’til things turn back around.

She told me she was disappointed and I am too.  Of course, timing may not have worked out tomorrow anyway with my new CT films, but I hadn’t had a chance to tell her about that.  She said she’d call and I reminded her that we both have the rest of our lives to get to know each other if we want, and we’d keep trying to just find some quiet time for us to hang together some.

Throw up a little prayer for my new friend, if ya feel like it?  Thanks.]

8:35am-9:00am Drive from RTher to Work

[With 1 stop to put gas in the car and buy lottery tickets.  Damn, if there was any time I could go for winning a lottery that would allow me to quit my job, if even just for a while, it’s now!]

9:00am-1:30pm Work
1:30pm-2:00pm Lunch

[Seems I’m back to shorties to make up work time missed for medical appts.]

2:00pm-5:30pm Work
5:30pm-6:30pm Drive from Work to Support Group
7:00pm-8:30pm Support Group
8:30pm-9:15pm Drive from Support Group to Home

[Yeah, sorry, you only get two days of this week.  Even with taking Wed off – this week was my first of 4 consecutive Wednesdays off – I’m getting  pretty tired.

It’s weird, the treatment really doesn’t feel like much – you can’t see it, smell it, or taste it – and yet it can lay you low.]

Additional Tasks Accomplished This Week:

– blogged
– wrote check for housecleaner who came the Monday after Thanksgiving instead of her regularly-scheduled day which landed on the day after Thanksgiving last week
– made it working Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday
– bought lottery tickets for the first time in weeks (months?)

Copyright Ridingthebcrollercoaster.com 2012 All Rights Reserved.

Okay, push this graph forward a year, stick some unemployment in the middle there, replace the IT analyst stuff with providing Apple sales/customer service and some other work stuff which shall remain nameless and yep, that’s me.

Scorchy's avatarThe Sarcastic Boob

capture

From the folks over at xkcd: A Webcomic of Romance, Sarcasm, Math, and Language.
(clicking on the image will take you the site)

View original post

Radiation Therapy Journal – Day 19 – Monday November 26, 2012

Treatment Notes:

– really nothing to report, except for slipping by one of my guys at the front of the suite on my way back to the machine – being Perfectly on time and having him scramble to catch up with me today – hehehe (well, I’d take credit, but I think we’re maybe headed into that amorphous time of half-holiday-light traffic as we gear up for schools to start letting out for Christmas Break (yeah, I’m Jewish, I celebrate Chanukah, I’ve been known to have a Christmas tree, not a Chanukah Bush, get over the ultra-political-correctness already, will ya?)

Doctor’s Visit:

– Yeah, long story short:

She said she called my RSurg, had a discussion with her, and that my RSurg was okay with a “regular boost,” but was concerned that I was getting a “super boost,” and therefore was comfortable with the boost plan in place for me

. . . which claims, all of them, will be checked out by me, hopefully telephonically, with my RSurg, since I trust her, but do Not trust my ROnc to have the Whole Me in her best interest.  I wish I did, but I don’t.  Oh well.

. . . which boost plan has not been drawn up – What?  Yes, the boost plan (the last week or so of treatment where they take the daily amount of radiation currently spread over the whole boob, and concentrate that amount of radiation in the tumor bed only) has Not Yet been planned.

As I was writing the last sentence, my ROnc called me – she wants to get new CT readings (since I’m having some swelling – or she finally believes I am – she never got to see me before I started rad therapy and I swelled almost immediately) but using my existing tattoos – to make sure the boost plan is completely accurate (since my body has changed with the swelling since beginning this treatment, the CT scans done a week before I began treatment may not be accurate to my anatomy today).  Then she will take Thursday and Friday to do the boost plan.  She will print it out for me (like I asked her to do today with the regular plan) so we can discuss it next Monday at our visit.

Then I’ll have all of next week, still on the original and unchanged first part of the plan to decide if I want to do the boost or not (which, if I do it, will start the following Monday) without getting me into a situation where I don’t have enough time to consider boost or no boost before we’re forced to consider an unintended break in treatment.

So, that’s the plan for the moment, so to speak.]

Side Effects:

– Um, other than blood pressure of 140/75 this morning (WAY high for me – I’m usually – well, BC as in Before Cancer anyways – around 110/60 normally), but since I was planning to follow my “new normal” Monday schedule of 1) get my radiation treatment, 2) put my doctor in her place, 3) go to work – I was okay with that reading (this too shall pass) – the good old “white-coat syndrome” magnified and all that.

Update: This early evening before acupuncture, Mo took my blood pressure again – 110/70.  Not surprising at all.  I was having the Pavlovian relaxation reaction just being there knowing what we were about to do was going to make me feel better, immediately and for days to come.

In fact, when I left I shared the elevator down with another cancer patient I had met at acupuncture and we both had that ever so slightly sleepy, very relaxed ‘I just had acupuncture’ look on both our faces and shared that moment together in the elevator on the way downstairs.

– less pain today.  I’m inside the week that my acupuncture treatment effects seem to last (I managed to get another appt with Mo tonight – yay!), and the past 4 days of not having to wear a bra, and being able to rest and/or sleep Whenever I Want have helped too – a much needed break indeed.

Copyright Ridingthebcrollercoaster.com 2012 All Rights Reserved.

Schedule: Week of November 19-21, 2012

Monday [Radiation Therapy – Day 16]:

7:10am-8:05am Drive from Home to RTher
8:05am-8:15am Waiting for RTher
8:15am-8:25am RTher
8:25am-8:40am Waiting for appointment with ROnc
8:40am-9:00am Appointment with ROnc
9:00am-10:00am PTher
10:00am-10:10am Post RTher-ablutions [in other words spreading boob goop]

[Yes, you are reading correctly – I had radiation therapy, a doctor’s visit And physical therapy, All Before going to work. :)]

10:10am-10:25am Drive from RTher to Work
10:30am-1:15pm Work
1:15pm-2:15pm Lunch

[I’m pretty sad about this Hostess thing – not only because I’m tired of upper management in companies being greedy, bankrupting their companies in the first place, And Then blaming it on the workers who put all that stolen money in their pockets!  And Then of course, a world without Twinkies and Ding Dongs would make me sad.  Are they healthy to eat?  No.  Is it okay to eat them once in a while?  Yes, I think it is.  Are they a reminder of my childhood I would be sorry to see disappear from the earth?  Yes again.

It has been said (most likely correctly) that another company will buy up the assets of the company (the brands and their accompanying product recipes – at least where the Hostess brand is concerned), so that these bad-for-you but occasionally good-for-your-nostalgic-soul-and-sweet-tooth cakes may indeed survive their original maker’s demise.  Just in case they Don’t get sold and survive, I was going on a hunt for ’em in my local neighborhood – namely my closest (within 5 miles or so of work) Hostess Outlet.

Long unnecessary story shorter than it could be – I came away with two bags of powdered sugar Donettes, but there were no Twinkies or Ding Dongs to be had at all in the outlet (good thing I have a box of each coming from Amazon – let’s not talk price – we definitely achieved the ‘silly’ level, but Did manage to stop short of ‘crazy,’ ‘ridiculous,’ and my personal favorite ‘batshit insane.’)  I’m low on time and energy in general these days (and interest too – a touch of depression anyone?  Yeah, I’m being treated for that – it’s cool.), but I’m thinking that was a lunch hour well-spent.]

2:15pm-5:30pm Work
5:30pm-5:45pm Drive from Work to Acupuncture
5:50pm-6:05pm Get blood drawn for lab work

[Please see “Seriously, this Woman Knows Her Way Around a Vein – I’m Naming Names Again.”]

6:05pm-7:00pm Acupuncture
7:00pm-7:45pm Drive from Acupuncture to Home

[Including a quick drive-through of a pharmacy to drop off the Rx for pain meds I was grudgingly given this morning.]

Tuesday [Radiation Therapy – Day 17]:

Hm, I completely did Not (obviously) keep track of this day, and since this is actually being posted Monday November 26, 2012, I’m gonna let this one go…

Wednesday [Radiation Therapy – Day 18]:

[Otherwise known as (effectively) Friday this week, with Thursday and Friday off from work.  :)]

7:05am-8:00am Drive from Home to RTher
8:05am-8:15am RTher
8:15am-8:20am Post-RTher ablutions
8:20am-8:35am Chatting with “Georgia” at the main lobby reception desk at the RTher facility
8:35am-8:45am Driving from RTher to Work
8:45am-1:00pm Work
1:00pm-1:30pm Lunch

[On days before holiday weekends, my company intends to close early.  To that end we’re asked to take short lunches.]

1:30pm-3:00pm Work

[Yup, we did close.  Yay!  (You see, I work in a fairly small shop, and the policy is ‘we all go or we all stay,’ so work that has be done by any one of a handful of us can scuttle an early day for all of us.  I’ve been both the scuttler and a victim of someone else’s scuttling in the past – but not today!)]

3:00pm-4:15pm Drive from Work to Home

Additional Tasks Accomplished This Week:

– blogged
– RSVP’d to two Thanksgiving Dinner invitations – one yes and one no
– indulged my returning knitting habit by buying more yarn for the stash (yeah, I know but it’s a thing with us crafters)
– that’s about it – it was a short week, ya know?

Copyright Ridingthebcrollercoaster.com 2012 All Rights Reserved.

SNL (1975-1980, 1985-Present): November 22-25, 2012

Who gets the reference?

Thursday:

– coffee
– reading in bed
– breffast with Hubby
– napping
– off to Thanksgiving Dinner

[At the house of one of Mom’s best friends since they were in high school, whose house I grew up in with her 3 daughters as much as I did my own – therefore kinda my second mom growing up.  Only the eldest of 2ndMom’s daughters was at dinner.  There was an interesting moment in the kitchen as we were finishing the dishes for serving: 2ndMom is an 18-year breast cancer survivor, so we were casually sharing tumor size, location, stage, treatments, side effects to treatments – you know, generally the basic get-to-know-you conversation for those of us in the club.  Her daughter said,” We don’t have to compare.”  (I think all that deeper than surface conversation was making her uncomfortable.)  Without even thinking I said, “You don’t have to be here for it, but yes, we do.”

Another thing cancer has actually brought me is a new aspect to my relationship with 2ndMom.  Our relationship first changed when I grew up and we started to interact with each other as adults instead of adult & child.  I appreciated her more then as I could see more than just the surface aspects of her (which were not quite as overtly warm as I was used to).  Now, with the breast cancer, the relationship has changed again, become closer again.  We share something that we both hope her daughters never know about like we do.]

Friday:

– coffee
– reading in bed
– knitting in bed while Hubby naps
– quick something to eat
– napping while Hubby works on continuing to put our garage back together from when it had to be completely emptied just a month before my diagnosis because our garage doors would not function anymore, so needed to be replaced – thereby requiring us to completely empty the garage 12-15 feet back from the doors (including overhead racks the full width of both the double and single doors, and fully loaded shelves on each side wall from front to back, including everything those storage systems carried – fun)
– vaping with Hubby

[We happened to be watching a food show extolling the virtues of burgers around the nation.  As we had napped on opposite schedules, I doubt either of us had eaten much that day (we prefer to eat together, and both sometimes try to wait for the other) so we were both hungry.  Obviously we were having burgers for dinner.]

– dropping off dry cleaning with Hubby
– picking up burgers & fries for dinner with Hubby from a delicious local chain

[I know tomorrow is Small Business Saturday, but we practiced that today.]

– eating yummy dinner while watching Fringe marathon

Saturday:

– coffee (hm, pattern?  Oh yeah!)
– checking FB, surfing the net for chunky yarn hat knitting patterns
– blogging

– buying/downloading audiobooks
– emptied/loaded dishwasher
– did dishes
– cleaned out fridge
– ate lunch cooked by Hubby

[leftover Costco chicken breast/thigh/leg, shredded
3/4 can of green beans
1/4 cup chopped onions
3/4 can of corn
whole can of chopped tomatoes with juice

all sauteed in schmaltz from the cut-up chicken
with garlic powder
and served over brown rice with a sprinkling of parmesan cheese

Oh man, was it good!]

– blogged

– upgraded computer to Mountain Lion

[And it survived!  Yay!  Now I can re-engage Time Machine – my poor ‘puter hasn’t been backed up in over a month and I don’t like that at all.  So tonight it’ll do its first new backup.]

– blogged
– called Mom
– massage in my living room by Randy

[I lay there when we were done and it was a magical moment – I didn’t hurt at all!]

Sunday:

– blogging
– handling collected e-mail (filing, dealing with, etc.)
– brunch w/ Hubby at home while watching the Brazilian GP 2012

[Brunch was:

– smoked sausage
– parmesan and garlic coated potato wedges rescued from the freezer
– toast
– eggs scrambled with onions, cheese and basil

I’m not quite sure how we did it.  After a quick outing early Friday evening to drop off dry cleaning and pick up the hamburgers & fries that had to be our dinner, Hubby and I didn’t leave the house ’til Monday morning.  We also hadn’t done a serious grocery store run in quite a while, resulting in the fact that we kept running out of basic supplies, like, well, milk, in addition to other things we Always have around.  Yet, somehow we kept finding ways to have delicious, plentiful and dare-I-say-it relatively healthy meals all weekend!]

– vaping and hanging out with Hubby some more, while dealing with more email management

[One of my email accounts went from 800+ in my inbox (I Hate Not having empty inboxes) to 26!]

– actively, consciously and mutually (although I wouldn’t be surprised if Hubby gave it up to keep me happy) bailing on our previous notion of hitting the grocery store and filling the larder with all of Our Basics we were out of
– dinner w/ Hubby (fresh, premade shepherd’s pie w/ brussel sprouts in a light butter sauce) while watching the latest Castle

Copyright Ridingthebcrollercoaster.com 2012 All Rights Reserved.

Radiation Therapy Journal – Day 17 – Tuesday November 20, 2012

Treatment Notes:

– some odd pain this time during treatment – some at the spot where my ribs in the treatment zone attach to my sternum, and some in the fold of my left armpit – at two separate points in the five minutes it takes me every morning, but still – weird.

Side Effects:

– pain – less of it today.  🙂  I’m crediting Mo (acupuncturist) and Dr. Chu’s acupuncture pattern he calls “WTF,” which I got, with a pain relief “back” as they say in bar lingo.  This is the second time (with Mo in particular, and with Dr. Chu’s WFT with a pain relief back) that I’ve had a better week, both on the energy and pain scales, after having their needles stuck in me for half an hour or so.  I’ve currently been doing this every other week (alternating with Support Group weeks, so I’m doing something other than strictly required medical appoints, but only one, every week – I kinda figured that was all I could handle time- and energy-wise), but I may have to add this into every week (even though it would mean on Support Group weeks, I’d be doing something after work both Monday and Tuesday) if it has the positive effect I’ve now seen twice.

–  more lightheadedness – this time as I was walking back to the elevator after coming back to work after a late lunch break.  I ate a big breakfast and I had some lunch before I ran my errand.  Ah well, how I feel these days is, sometimes, an hour by hour thing.

RTher

Copyright Ridingthebcrollercoaster.com 2012 All Rights Reserved.