Radiation.....rays of love.

So my chemo was over, the cancer is out and my expanders were in.  I kinda felt like I might actually beat the beast. But the journey was far from over.

Next on the agenda was radiation.  This can kill cells or change genes so the cells cannot grow. I really had no idea what it entailed but I figured it can't be worse than what I had already been through. So after a couple of months of healing from the mastectomy, off I went.  

My first appointment was just a consultation.  But my second one was cool.  First, they laid me on this warm blue mat and pushed it all up around me and made it form to my body. I would lay in this when I would receive radiation to keep me immobile and make it possible to line up the machine perfectly every time. 

Then they laid me in a machine that put red laser lights in graphs all over me.  This was to map out my treatment. . I liked seeing the "crosshairs".

Where ever they needed the machine to line up they put a little black dot with tattoo ink    I was kind of bummed it was barely visable.  I was excited to get a tattoo so a teenie tiny dot was kind of a let down.  To this day I can't find them.  There were  few on my side, a few on my breast and a few midline.  (Bazinga!  Look at those expanders!  You could knock someone out with those girls!) The marker lines were for something else but you can kind of see a few dots.  

Then they set my plan.  Radiation varies for each patient. Most often the entire breast gets radiation, and an extra boost of radiation is given to the area in the breast where the cancer was removed to prevent it from coming back in that area. The boost is often given after the treatments to the whole breast have ended. It uses the same machine, but the beams are aimed at the place where the cancer was removed. \My cancer was found in the lymph nodes under the arm, so radiation was given to this area as well. They also treated my supraclavicular lymph nodes (nodes above the collarbone) and internal mammary lymph nodes (nodes beneath the breast bone in the center of the chest).

I went everyday for a little over 6 weeks.  The treatment itself only took a few minutes but the set-up took a bit of time.  But for the most part I was in and out in 30 minutes. And Radiaton Oncology was only 4 minutes from my house.  I live in the shadow of the hospital.  My crew rocked.  They would crank up my favorite Pandora station during treatment.  And I mean LOUD!  I had a blast.  It was painless too.  But I did burn.  

But those burns are nothing.  I just wore soft clothes and used a special lotion.  I've had way worse sunburns.  And I didn't mind going everyday.  But it really did change the skin.  And now we know it is what blew my thyroid out.  Shmeh. 

My crew was awesome.  This was my graduation from radiation.  Yay me!