Chemotherapy ended Dec. 15th, I lost a breast on Jan. 25th, and I began radiation on March 16th. You'd think after getting through all of that I would be relieved, and I am --greatly--but I'm also still scared.
Laying in the radiation room is an incredibly isolating experience, one the patient has to endure daily for the duration of the treatment. I thought laying there and watching the machine orbit around me, listening to it buzz and groan as it zaps me with radiation, would get easier but it has yet to do so, and I'm seven doses into treatment.
Treatment begins with a flurry of activity, the technicians calling out numbers and moving me around on the table to line my tattoos and stickers up with the machinery and then suddenly they leave and you are all alone, the giant leaden door closing you in the room. They come and go several times to readjust your position and to lay the bolus on your skin (which brings the radiation closer to the skin and keeps if from penetrating too deeply into your body) but each time they leave I wonder what I'm allowing them to do to me. If it's so dangerous they need to leave the room as they treatment me, why am I letting them do it, and how can it possibly be helping?
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