I realized I forgot to talk about the radiation boosts. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks, and I do want to get this down while everything is pretty fresh.
I had 20 treatments, one a day five days a week. The first 15 were the ones I mentioned earlier and zapped the entire breast from two directions. The last five were the boosts.
For the first 15 treatments, the first zap came from slightly from the bottom and to the right of my breast (5 o’clock) and included the entire right side of my left breast extending up a bit onto my upper chest. This picture gives a pretty good idea of what I mean. You can see the field of radiation on my skin now, some two weeks after the treatments are done, my skin is a bit brown and all the pores are slightly red. It’s like I have a weird rash.
The second zap came from the left side or 9 o’clock and aimed from the left toward my chest. It caught my underarm where the sentinel node incision is. That one annoyed both incisions.
But the boosts were different. Instead of having four X’s drawn on me, the radiation tech drew a demented circle starting at my nipple and extending down and around to the left. The field of radiation was entirely that left side of my left breast centered right on the incision on the breast (which outlines the nipple, it’s just over half the circumference). And I got one zap per day. I also noticed those didn’t last as long as either of the two zaps during normal radiation (I never thought I would use the word normal with radiation). The boosts really bothered the incision and my nipple. In fact, I’m still peeling two weeks later—just glad I didn’t have any blisters. Altogether I had 50.5 centiGrays.
I saw the radiation oncologist at that last visit—he examined my skin and was pleased with how well I did and asked about the fatigue. I told him I definitely was fatigued, and I asked how long that would take to resolve. I was a little dismayed when he said four to six months. Yeesh. I didn’t want to believe that, but I’m here to say that this week—two weeks after finishing radiation—I’m just completely out of gas. Still, I’m glad he told me otherwise I’d be getting down on myself for being a slacker.
I had 20 treatments, one a day five days a week. The first 15 were the ones I mentioned earlier and zapped the entire breast from two directions. The last five were the boosts.
The second zap came from the left side or 9 o’clock and aimed from the left toward my chest. It caught my underarm where the sentinel node incision is. That one annoyed both incisions.
But the boosts were different. Instead of having four X’s drawn on me, the radiation tech drew a demented circle starting at my nipple and extending down and around to the left. The field of radiation was entirely that left side of my left breast centered right on the incision on the breast (which outlines the nipple, it’s just over half the circumference). And I got one zap per day. I also noticed those didn’t last as long as either of the two zaps during normal radiation (I never thought I would use the word normal with radiation). The boosts really bothered the incision and my nipple. In fact, I’m still peeling two weeks later—just glad I didn’t have any blisters. Altogether I had 50.5 centiGrays.
I saw the radiation oncologist at that last visit—he examined my skin and was pleased with how well I did and asked about the fatigue. I told him I definitely was fatigued, and I asked how long that would take to resolve. I was a little dismayed when he said four to six months. Yeesh. I didn’t want to believe that, but I’m here to say that this week—two weeks after finishing radiation—I’m just completely out of gas. Still, I’m glad he told me otherwise I’d be getting down on myself for being a slacker.
1 comment:
I've had a few friends go through radiation and the one thing they commented on was the fatigue. Isn't it so crazy how such a little "zap" can wreak havoc with you like that? Glad you're getting through it ok.
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