Chemo Cycle 1 Done & All About Radiation

Thursday marked the completion of my first cycle of chemo.  The oral Etoposide chemo was tolerated much better than  IV and so for the next three cycles I will do IV Cisplatin and oral Etoposide  on day one followed by two more days of Etoposide oral chemo. Next round starts April 20. We have to wait three weeks between cycles to give my immune system and bone marrow time to heal. The fun side effects are expected after day 4 post chemo so that will make for a fun weekend of Eric waiting on me hand and foot! Nah!!! Hoping the weather will be cleared by then so we can get out exercise off some of the side effects.  The list is concerning but the alternative is  worse so mind of matter will be our motto.

Thursday was also the first day of proton radiation therapy. Aside from all the high tech machines in the room you wouldn't even know anything was happening. The room is large, really large, about the size of two regular MRI or CT rooms. There is a Conveyor belt of sorts in the ceiling that moves the machine that delivers the beam. The table rotates around as well as moves across the room to access Xray imaging and  CT imaging  all while I lay perfectly still in the mold that was made earlier last week. The process is long and probably boring to anyone reading this but I need to put it down so I can get it out of my head. So skip the next paragraph if you are not interested.

Radiation starts with getting in the correct position which seems easy but it takes a lot of wiggling to get in the precise position from the stimulation. The table jiggles to move you  ever so slightly so you do not get out of position.Then there are X-rays, I actually have no idea what they are looking for at this point. Then you wait for the beam- and its super anticlimatic because you cant see anything- its invisible! The beam is invisible and perfectly soundless. Not kidding. Makes you wonder if anything is even happening. There are four rooms that can use the beam one after the other so once the machines are all lined up to your tattoos you wait your turn for the beam to be delivered to you.  I have to be radiated from two different angles (hoping to get an iron man emblem at the end of this 🦸🏻‍♀️) so the proton beam machine moves around to the tattoos and I wait for my turn at getting beamed up.  Sounds simple, but there are very intelligent people behind the scenes assuring that it is delivered EXACTLY where it needs to be. Once a week at the conclusion of the treatment that day the table moves over into a CT machine and takes an image of my chest, abdomen and pelvis to assure that there has been No anatomical changes (ie Im not gaining or losing to much weight or any other changes in anatomy have occurred). This is vital to making sure again that the beam is being delivered exactly where it needs to go.

Now I am not so sure I will be able to get any real  good photo shoots in radiation. Tragic I know! Eric is obviously not  allowed anywhere in the back so we may be out of luck- unless I can get a rad tech to humor me and take some pictures.  They did say I can bring my phone back and take some video and pictures of the set up which I plan to do this evening. In a prior post I mentioned that I lack seniority the first week of radiation so my times basically are Past my bedtime.  Tonights appointment (2/24)  is not until 9pm which will make our journey to the radiation oncology location a little tricky. Over half of all main entrances into the clinic facilities are closed to ensure the  very few patients  left here enter through only a few designated Covid 19 screening check point areas. Before 6pm this is not a problem because of how the mayo campus is all connected via skyways and foot subways and there are more screening check points. Oh and by the way it's snowing! In April!

Also, in case you didn't see last two posts comments made using safari web browser are not showing up, i know many have asked about that. If you read the blog using Edge or chrome they should post.