cancer – day 180

Wow, 180 days. That’s the six months marker. Wow. Six months of my life (since cancer diagnosis, when life changed), gone. And years of cancer treatment to come. Hard to believe.

The universe conspired against us today. We just spent three hours and twenty minutes trying to get a five-minute blood draw. My port doesn’t work properly, it clots. So they have to use this de-clotting agent, TPA, which they inject in the port and then we have to wait and try it every thirty minutes until it works. We were about to give up, when it suddenly released. Then of couse we had to wait for the receptionist to answer a zillion questions on the phone (including explaining how valet parking works) before she could schedule my next blood draw in three weeks. Then we wait forever for the elevator, which stops at every floor on the way back down. Then we wait for the valet parking, then we get stuck in traffic. Ugh. Next time I’m going alone, no point in wasting Mark’s afternoon when it should have been a quick in-and-out.

I had my second radiation treatment this morning. It also ran really late, so I didn’t have any time in between that and the blood draw. They told me today that Dr. Ryu also ordered that a bolus (a “tissue equivalent substance”) be placed at a particular spot to trick the radiation machine and draw the radiation closer to the skin, just over where the lumpectomy was. So they put on this round sticker that I’m supposed to not wash off for as long as possible, and that’s their marker for where to place this bolus every other day in radiation. They said it does probably mean the burn will be worse in that spot, because the skin is getting more radiation there, so I have that to look forward to. I’m already getting itchy, and they said to start skin therapy (pure aloe) right away and not to wait until I look burned. And man, aloe is seriously cold straight from the bottle! 🙂