A day in Radiotherapy

Today I thought I'd write a bit about what actually happens during a radiotherapy session. I know I feel much better about all this stuff the more it's demystified, and maybe writing about it and explaining it is the ultimate demystifier (no, not demister, that's something different. DemystiFIER).

A bit of context-setting first. Every morning, I look at my appointment time, and make a plan. An eating plan. Basically, I have to take my tablets an hour before the session, and they have to be taken on an empty stomach, which means not eating anything for two hours before or an hour after. So I count backwards from my appointment and work out an eating strategy that fits in. I have resisted the temptation to use Excel to create a daily critical path project plan. Then, when the time is right and I've strategically eaten/not eaten, I stomp/splosh/stroll over to the Christie and head straight for the Radiotherapy department. I hand in my appointmnet card and get 'queued in' (the technical term?), then she writes down my apointment for the next day. This is one of the more frustrating aspects of the whole thing - that they only tell me my appointment time the day before, which makes it difficult to plan other things. However, I get my Monday appointment time on a Friday, i.e. three whole days in advance, so I can actually plan things. Ha! Feels like I beat the system a little bit every Friday!

So then I sit and do a bit of knitting while I wait to be called through to suite 8 ('my' machine - it looks like the one in the photo). When they take me through, they always check my details first, even though we all know each other pretty well by now. Then I lie down on the bed with my head on my own personal bespoke head rest, they put a cushion under my legs (not bespoke), and they put my mask on me. The mask is designed to make sure my head is in exactly the same place every time. It was made for me in a way that reminded me a bit of year 9 art: they used strips of plaster bandage dipped in warm water to mould my face and round the top of my head, my ears, and under my chin, then used the plaster of paris mould to make a clear perspex version (that bit was not like year 9 art). So the mask goes on my face (it's open at the mouth and nose), and then they clip the mask to the bed. This was pretty horrible the first couple of times - I'm not a claustrophobic person, but it felt pretty claustro in there..I'm used to it now though. Then, the two (young glamourous) radiographers spend two or three minutes shouting out some numbers, then they leave the room - they control the machine from the computers outside. I'm on the bed for about 5 minutes, and I know when the machine is on when I can hear a sort of humming buzz. Nothing touches me, it doesn't hurt, there's nothing to it really. Then they come and unclip my mask, and that's it.

So that's the routine, and the routine-ness of it is reassuring - it's starting to feel quite normal now. I'm even quite enjoying having some structure to my days and weeks - while I was recuperating from the operation, days and weekends and weeks were quite formless, but now, weekends and weekdays are different, and on weekdays, I generally do my own thing in the morning, have lunch (strategically), then head out on my stomp. I'll take my camera in some time next week and take a snap of the mask to show you. But for now, that's it. Thank you so so much for all the glorious comments, I've enjoyed reading them so much! And as you can see, by popular demand, I've stuck to the macro-blog format (for now...). Until next time xx