"Shine your light on me..."

...that light I see at the end of the tunnel. The title is from a line of a song of a favourite artist of mine. He has been kind enough to send good wishes and love my way in my healing. I won't mention his name here as again a way of keeping my identity private.

Yes folks...I now have ONE more chemo treatment left. I hope the last I'll ever have for the rest of my long life. I don't like to start off in a negative way but I do have a complaint. The nurses used me as a pin cushion on Wednesday. The nurse who took blood from my hand blew my vein so I have a horrible bruise on my hand. Then the chemo nurse tried a different vein for the chemo drug, thought she had it but it wasn't drawing back the blood so she tried the favourite one. I now have a lovely bruise on the first attempt vein. *sigh* I look like I have been shooting up. The Taxol already causes me to bruise easily so you can imagine what my arm looks like. I am feeling tired but because of the Taxol, steriods and weight gain I can feel my blood pressure going up. My face is flushed and normally stays this way for about 4 days. I know it won't be for long. I am eager to start losing all this weight. Once I end my radiation treatments on August 2nd I can get to work on it. As for how I am feeling today. Again, tired and the there's a bit of numbness returning to my feet. I am trying to drink as much water as I can to flush out the chemicals from my body. Sometimes I can get a little lax about my water intake and it's so important to flush the system.

I've noticed new hair growth on my head but also loss, so strange. My eyebrows are thinning out but I always had sparse eyebrows to begin with so it almost looks the same. My eyelashes are still with me. It's so interesting to see how all these chemicals can affect each person differently. I asked the oncology nurse whether or not the doctor adjusted the amount of Taxol and Benadryl I was receiving. She said no however the first and last treatments of Taxol are the toughest to get through. In the first treatment your body is adjusting to this new drug and the last is the accumulation of all 8 different treatments. I was only running on 4 hours sleep the night before treatment and noticed during treatment my left leg started twitching again. This time it really bothered me so I got up and walked around for a bit. That did the trick. I felt fine yesterday and even met up with a good friend for lunch and shopping. I bought some clothes for my son and gorgeous wedgie rock and roll concert type shoes. It was so nice to spend time with a wonderful friend and have some fun spending money.

Now...I was supposed to talk about my appointment with my radiation oncologist and provide some information about radiation treatment. Since this post is already long I'll warn you that it's going to get longer so bear with me. I'm relaxed about the treatments because I already know quite a bit when I went with my dad for his appointments. If you're still hanging on here's the info:

Radiation Therapy

Let me start off by saying once again what a wonderful radiation oncologist I have and super nurse. I have been fortunate enough to have people who I've immediate clicked with. Not only are they easy to talk to but have a warm people skills. In all my appointments with all the different doctors they always refer to all the doctors I will encounter as my "team" and that I am part of this team.

"Radiation therapy is the use of a certain type of energy (radiation) from x-rays, gamma rays, electrons and other sources to destroy cancer cells. Other names for this common method of treating cancer are radiotherapy, x-ray therapy or irradiation. Radiation in high doses destroys cells in the area being treated by damaging the DNA in their genes, making it impossible for them to grow and divide. During radiation therapy, both cancer cells (which are growing in an uncontrolled way) and healthy cells are affected, but most healthy cells can repair themselves afterwards".

I will be receiving External Beam Radiation therapy where the radiation will be directed at the cancer and surrounding tissue from a machine outside the body. It is used to treat most types of cancer. This will destroy cancer cells that may remain. After my initial meeting with the radiation oncologist and nurse an appointment for my planning session (stimulation) was made in 2-3 weeks time. Again I'm going to quote from the info book they provided me because it describes it better than I could do.

What Happens at a Planning Session
"Almost everyone who has external beam radiation therapy will have a planning session before treatment can begin. The radiation therapist uses a machine called a stimulator to set up your treatment. A simulator is not a treatment machine. The most common type of simulator used in Canada is a CT simulator. It can take images or scans, which provide a picture of the area to be treated. These pictures help your radiation therapy team plan your treatment and decide how to direct the radiation to your body. You will need to lie very still during your simulation, which may take up to an hour. The process can be tiring.

Using the images as a guide, the radiation oncologist will start the plannning and the radiation therapist will often mark the area to be treated with a marker or with lines of dots in permanent ink. These marks are very important. They act as a map and will help make sure that the radiation is targeted at the same area each time.

In my case I was tattooed with freckle sized dots, as far as I can see I have 4 or 5 marks. These marks will be used for two things. They will help the team set up the machine and some other the other marks are where the actual beams will run through. They recorded numbers which they will used to set up the machine on my first visit. They even took pictures of how I was positioned and if they used a wedge under my neck etc... which they did. I even had a photo ID taken. They check my picture and me to make sure they are treating the correct person. Everything is very carefully done, it gives me a great sense of trust and confidence in my team. I started to panic a bit in the CT scan and normally closed in spaces do not bother me but I think because I knew I couldn't move I was struggling with that and how long it was taking. But I did fine and the kindness I received from everyone was great. At one point my breasts were exposed and didn't have to be at that moment. The radiation therapist quickly covered me up. The other person who was working with her was a male so I think she was always aware of how I must have been feeling. She kept asking how I was feeling and doing. How could I not relax with such a great group of people. I will go into more detail about the side effects in another post. Right now I need to shower and rest for a bit.

Stay tuned, more to come!