Only 1 More Week's Worth!

As of tonight there are only 7 more radiation treatments! And 5 of those are just a localized boost. No more torturing my underarm and underboob!

This afternoon after my shower i made the mistake of putting a tiny bit of baby powder under my breast. I was just soooo tired of feeling wet and yucky. Big mistake. All that loose wet skin dried instantly and split. A patch about the size of large flattened marshmallow peeled off, just like that!... Get the polysporin.

I'm very tired. But that's probably because I was up until 3:30am doing a web project and then got up again at 7:30 to go painting. Actually, I didn't get out of the house until 9:00. Still put in 5 hours at the school today. I get tomorrow off. The janitors are waxing the floors and I won't be able to walk on them until Friday. Yay! Day off!

Managing Energy

Every 3-4 days I find myself full of energy. I take advantage of this strength by getting so many chores out of the way. It then takes 3-4 days to recover...hmmmm.
Almost finished the laundry, now to de-clutter the office.

How's the Radiation Going?

Not a lot to blog about if there's not a lot to complain about! :-)

My eyebrow's are 3/4 back. Most of them have sprouted but they need a bit more length.
My eyelashes are 1/2 grown in. I can feel them from left to right but they are only about 1/4 as long as they will be and very fine. Baby lashes.
My moon face has mostly gone away. I was looking a bit like a male orangutan.

Radiation:
The swelling is back. And I'm supposed to be massaging to help with drainage. But not too hard. It's not very comfortable.
There's a lot of reddening, especially under neath and under arm. My skin is getting thin. The nurse was insistent that I should be using cordizone cream / polysporin as well as the glaxol based cream.

Everytime they position me under the radiation thingy I'm reminded of the time I was using a microscope as a kid and zoomed in too close and cracked the slide. (That would be me about to be cracked!)

10 Rads Down

Only 20 more to go!
Soooooo itchy!!! Applying ointment thrice daily does not relieve the itch.

Yesterday's appointment was late by an hour and 20 minutes. The gentleman next to me (waiting for his wife) commented about the delays, to which I replied, "It would be so much better with a take a number system so that you could tell if you had time to grab a coffee or not. He immediately jumped up and offered to go get me one... and he wouldn't take my money! The kindness of strangers.

There's a 40ish looking woman who's appointment is often scheduled right around mine. So far our appointments have never been on time, so I get her frustration. But she WHINES!!!! Holy Cow! I just want to club her. Every time she opens her mouth this high pitched, cracklely, about to cry, oh-woaw-is-me noise comes out (it's not like she has a cold or anything!). She cries and makes a fuss every time - even when they are only running 15 minutes behind. Then when she's finished, she puts on her business suite and heads out the door like nothing happened.

Another reason to be grateful: I'm not her.

Must ask if I can start taking Glucosamine again. My knee is big time ow. Crawling around on the school floors doesn't help much either (painting gig).

Hey! My eyebrows are just beginning to fill in. And I have the tiny, tiniest little eye lashes you ever saw, or felt because most of them are invisible to the naked eye. If eyelashes really do grow back (are constantly growing) they WHY do I not ever get really long ones? So unfair that the prettiest lashes are reserved for boys.

2nd week of Radiation

All done chemo - that was finished up about 6 weeks ago. Had a brief rest in Grande Prairie on a girl friends farm just before radiation began. I didn't feel like I did a lot of healing but when I got home I was clearly stronger and faster. I'm almost done week 2 of radiation with no side effects yet. 8 down... 22 more to go.

Radiation isn't so scary. They have nice decor, the technicians are friendly and the actual procedure only takes a few minutes per day (Monday - Friday except holidays).

The nurse I spoke with today asked what kind of drugs the Dr had me on... none. She was surprised. I told her how Dr Higgins had described my chemo as very aggressive (nasty stuff) let me have 5 weeks off instead of 4 between chemo and radiation. And my hormone replacement therapy (HRT) wouldn't start until a couple weeks after radiation.

I guess those were nasty drugs because normally radiation overlaps chemo or HRT overlaps radiation. I'm getting them all one at a time.

Damaged nail beds are making a come back, I can feel my eyelashes and brows starting to come in and I have about 1 1/4" of hair again!

Weather's been smoking hot this week. With the humididex almost 50C every day! Thank goodness for AC.