cancer – day 221

They changed my radiation today. For the first 28 treatments, they were doing a proton radiation, and today they changed to an electron one that they’re going to do for the next two weeks . . . they call it a radiation “boost.” There was some confusion as to the technical details for my radiation boost, so one of the techs was running back and forth to my radiation oncologist confirming the setup while they had me on the table this morning (oy vey, is that thing COLD!). The notes in my chart were conflicting. There was a note for them to use the same bolus as before, which is circular and about two inches in diameter, not too bad in terms of the size of skin patch getting the extra burn. But the doctor told the tech to radiate the entire electron field, which is essentially the entire area that’s been burned already and that didn’t make sense with the small bolus. Bummer is that it turns out that they had to use a new bolus that is absolutely huge, and they used three long strips of tape to secure it, so all three of my worst burn areas had to have tape peeled off after the radiation treatment, taking some skin with it. Hopefully tomorrow the tape won’t be as sticky . . .

I had the best evening last night. After yoga (which was cool because Kim was focusing on the hyoid bone in the top of the neck and thinking about moving that bone really helped stretch my spine better), I had dinner at Brian’s house. He grilled steaks (my favorite dinner) and opened a great bottle of wine and we spent the evening catching up and remembering all these great stories of fun adventures we’ve had together. Brian is an old, old friend that I met in the San Jose airport by teasing him about putting his name badge back on after going through security, a story I think I told a long time ago in my blog. 🙂