Half way through radiation, yay!  We are noticing the beginning of some side-effects, sunburn…..or “pinking” as the doctors so charmingly refer to it. Fatigue hits hard and immediate at weird moments. There is a struggle to do things that used to be very simple, like opening those stupid orange pill bottles. Limbs feel as if weights are hanging from them.

Daily exercise has been happening. We love pretty rocks, so about a month ago, we began researching the best rock hounding locations in the Seattle area. (sneaky motivation for lazy people to get out there and exercise) Once a week, we’ve made a trek to a suggested site and have collected some beautiful geodes, crystals, agates, and jaspers. Plant pots and flat surfaces of our home are accumulating beautiful colored rocks and we’ve met some die-hard rock collectors.

We sometimes wander the ocean beaches during weekdays after radiation treatment, looking for agates. Nightly, we do light weight lifting exercises. But, I have to admit that the last two days my ability to keep up the exercise routine has lessened. It may be time to drop back a bit.

Every weekday, we make the drive past the Space Needle on our way downtown to Seattle Cancer Care Alliance for my radiation treatments, where I pass through an enormous twelve inch thick door (which has large colorful decals of Bert and Ernie on it for, I suppose, a cheerful affect) into a room with a gurney surrounded by all kinds of movable metal equipment. Low level music plays in the background as I strip from the waist up, hop on the gurney, lie down, and move my arms to grip metal handles above my head.  My feet are tied to together and a pair of virtual goggles are placed on my face. Three friendly radiation technicians then spend time alternating between watching screens while shouting out scientific sounding calculations to each other, physically adjusting the gurney and magic markering my body and running out of the room to a protected far off screening room to speak over a microphone and give me breathing orders, “Breathe deep until you see the yellow line in your goggles reach the middle of the green box”, “Hold that yellow line (my breath) perfectly still.” “You are a little bit above the middle of the box. Can you let just a teensy bit of that breath out and hold?” “You went a little below the bottom of the green box, breathe normally and we will try that again.” It is important that the measurements and the location of my body be perfectly placed for radiation. It is also important that my lungs be filled to a certain point and breath held during the treatment to protect my heart from the radiation laser beams. My lungs and ribs will have some permanent radiation damage, but hopefully the heart will avoid any damage.  Once everything is at the exact needed point, I am left alone with a big machine as it moves around my body to shoot six different beams of radiation into specific locations of my body. After which, a voice comes through the room speakers letting me know that they are done and will be entering the room shortly, I can move and cover myself with the hospital gown, but do not attempt to get off the gurney yet. Once the technicians enter the room (often annoyingly clapping and saying “good job!”), the gurney is lowered, I hop off, shout a “see you tomorrow” to the gang, head for the changing rooms, stopping to grab my choice of beverage from the patient fridge, before going in search of my husband in the waiting room. It is a surreal experience lying exposed on a hospital gurney listening to an old upbeat Beatles song from my childhood, following the directions of a disembodied voice, while thinking, “When my friends and I were listening and singing to “Got to Get You Into My Life” as a teen, I never imagined…”

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I believe it is time for a nap.