So. What a day today has been. I got a last moment appointment for my "planning" session for the radiotherepy - in, wait for it, Maidstone. Some nonsense about refurbishment and the wrong kind of CT scanner ruling out a much more sensible William Harvey or Kent and Canterbury which are much closer to home.
Oh well, a 40 min drive is hardly high on my list of complaints right not, so off I toddle. It started at 10:45 and I was reliably informed I'd be done at 1pm. Psh. I finally made it home at half five. I mean, its not like I have nothing better to do, or any impending sense of not wasting my own time at the moment, but hey ho, what do you do. Emergencies cropped up and everything went out of schedule from there.
I ended up spending most of the day chatting to fellow patients (or inmates to the torture chamber - more on that later), which was interesting and passed the time at least. At least my lack of a sense of hunger paid off, I never really noticed I hadn't eaten anything all day until I got back and was promptly grumpy with the kids. Quick bowl of soup and a smoothie later and all was right with the world. I never actually felt hungry though. I'm still getting used to that, not sure why I simply never seem to get hungry any more.
Anyway, today I got my list of appointments for the chemo and radiotherepy. In no great surprise the damned things start on my birthday with a combined day - so I get to spend pretty much all of my birthday being cooked (in the morning) and then poisoned for the rest. Yay, happy birthday me. I think someone somewhere is teaching me a lesson about not posting things about luck :-P
Having being presented with my appointments a very nice nurse went through what I can expect, side effects and so forth, with a good deal of honesty which I really appreciated, raising my hopes of not actually suffering too much with the treatments, especially with my secret weapon of the mouthwash. This done, once again mulling over what all of the side effects can be - including a potentially permanent loss of saliva and taste, hair loss to my face and lower neck and (this was a new one on me) the skin in the irradiated regions being darker than the rest of my skin. Oh joy to that one, I can't wait to see how that turns out. This done I then had to have my "mask" made. This thing is a plastic mould which is designed to be a skin tight fit over my head and shoulders so that I am perfectly aligned for each cooking. This is because I will be getting a nice new ARC treatment, with a modulated xray output which is faster and more accurate than older radio treatments. This part is good, although the mask is like wearing some kind of torture implement. Its very close fitting (for obvious reasons) and you can't see out (although I can ask for eye holes apparently). Add to the fact that I am lying flat on my back - which I don't feel 100% comfortable with yet because my tongue tends to slide back without my full control and feels rather odd at the back of my mouth. After the fitting I was supposed to have a CT scan so they can get a accurate set of targets for the treatment - this is where the clever part of the ARC cooking process comes in - because everything is computer controlled with sub-millimetre accuracy. However, because I had to have "contrast media" again, I had to have a cannula put in before I could get the CT scan. My heart sank at this point, I knew what was coming. For reasons best known to themselves my veins just love playing hide and seek with people trying to get a line in or take blood or something. It takes quite an experienced nurse or doctor to actually get a good hit on the first try. Unfortunately, the nurse I had, whilst very friendly and nice, obviously wasn't up to catching my veins. 45 mins I was there being punctured in various places in my arm, elbow and back of my hand. I think about 5 different people tried, in the end a registrar managed to get a line in from my wrist - which was incredibly painful and rather uncomfortable afterwards too. It still hurts now. I think the back of my hand is just going to turn black and blue by morning.
Oh the joys of cancer. On the plus side, the mask and scanning wasn't so bad - rather relaxing in fact - if I can get the eye holes in I reckon I might be able to have a short doze during the treatments, especially with some nice relaxing music playing.
