Another day gone, another day closer to those damned treatments. Today has been a day of visits by various nurses to check on and drill the care of the feeding tube into me. Yes, I have this lovely little plastic socket in my stomach now, with a little tube hanging down. I can now pump water, food (provided its a liquid, of course) and medicine direct into my stomach. Lovely. The darned thing has caused me grief today - I am suffering badly from gas still, it get trapped on the way up and I feel like crap until I can manage to get it out. The pain of trapped wind is bad enough, but when you get it constantly it can be rather debilitating. At times today its been bad enough to make me feel nauseous too, a horrible hot and sweaty sort of sickness which adds an unpleasant edge to the general pain. I have been assured that it will settle down, I could just have done without it today. I won't have eaten enough today now - I bet I lose some of my hard won weight gain just before the start of treatments next week (when I will doubtless lose more). The problem is if I lose enough weight then they have to remake the mask I have to wear for the zapping, which would just cause a delay in the middle of the treatment schedule and generally be a pain in the butt.
I also had a hospital appointment today - this one was to "validate" the mask and take a final set of xrays before they start cooking me next week. I actually met the machine that will do said cooking as a result - the thing triples up by doing xray and CT imaging too - which was interesting to find out. For those that don't know, the process of being zapped/cooked by this thing involves laying to a table thing which as a mould for your neck and head to rest on. Then comes the mask part - its a white plastic thing, a breathable type of plastic full of holes, which is moulded to fit very tightly. That first sensation of it being placed over your face is bad enough (you can't open you eyes with it on, thats how closely it fits) but then they clamp it to the table and suddenly its totally skin tight - the initial feeling of it being clamped down is not nice, but once done its not too bad. You then get fed into the machine and it spins and whirs around taking xrays or scans of the region to be treated before they finally set it off on its cancer killing spree. That last part I have yet to experience, today was about making any final adjustments to the targeting and the mask.
I don't know how long I was in the machine today, but I asked if the actual treatment would be a comparable length - oh no, they reply - which is a blessing, I had thought that I would find the whole process claustrophobic - in fact its over quick enough to be kind of relaxing. I daresay I will get used to the mask, they have promised to cut eye holes in it for me so at least I can see what is going on.
