This is my third round of radiotherapy, having had several weeks' worth on my pelvis in the past and a week on my neck last autumn. I was a bit surprised when my oncologist said he wanted to blast my abdomen again. I thought you couldn't have radiotherapy more than once on the same area. So before my first session I did raise this query with the radiographer. She assured me that the doctor knew what he was doing! Yes, of course he does, but the first lot was given in a different hospital, and I just wanted to make sure that there was no overlap. Apparently there isn't. Although this is regular radiotherapy, it is apparently highly targeted. I am to have 20Gy over the five sessions, both from the back and from the front. This sounds like a lot to me,, but what do I know, really?
Well, I breezed into my first session, feeling quite confident, in spite of the list of side-effects they reeled off to me, that I would get through it with the minimum fuss, telling myself that the effects of r/t are cumulative and that I wouldn't feel anything for the first day or two. But oh how wrong I was! I'm staying in a hotel this week, as I couldn't have faced 2x3 hr journeys each day. I got back to the hotel yesterday after the treatment and collapsed on the bed, feeling sick and nauseous. Of course I had shrugged off the offer of anti-sickness medication - never needed it before, why should I now? Luckily I did have some root ginger with me, so I made some ginger tea and sipped that throughout the evening, and eventually the sick feeling went away. But I was so tired I could barely move a muscle. I dragged myself down to the restaurant at dinner time as I felt I had to eat something, but all I managed was a piece of toast, then back to bed again. This morning was no better. After a more or less sleepless night feeling as though I'd been run over by a truck, I managed to extract myself from the bed by about 10.00 am and made it down to breakfast before they closed the restaurant. Breakfast was a spoonful of yoghurt and 2 spoonsful of porridge. Better than nothing I suppose. After another long rest, I forced myself to get up and go into town, where a little retail therapy miraculously revived me just in time for the next treatment. I've had that now, and am back at the hotel all primed to do nothing at all until tomorrow.
