Visiting Ray D. Ashun

Sorry I have not been blogging much for the past couple of weeks. The process for setting up radiation takes a couple of weeks, so I took advantage of the wait time to take a vacation from breast cancer. I didn't visit any other blogs, didn't read any memoirs and didn't do any research. As a consequence, there was not much to tell regarding the whole breast cancer situation. Add to that the fact that my Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is way out of control and causing pain in my hands during the night and stretching until mid-day. I just haven't felt like typing in the morning, and if my day gets going I am not likely to sit down and write.

If you're part of my prayer team I would appreciate prayers that this carpal tunnel pain would go away. I am not doing much with my hands these days, so my theory is that going off the pill has messed with my hormones. The hormonal fluctation is causing water retention which is settling in my hands and causing pressure in the tissues surrounding the nerve running through my carpal tunnel. This also happened after the birth of both children which is what makes me believe this theory. I'm trying to drink a lot of water, running 3-4 days a week and trying not to eat salty or sugary things...(I said TRYING) but it's not working so well. Argh.

As far as Ray D. Ashun (Radiation) goes, so far it's a breeze. I drive to the Providence Cancer Partnership each day for my 10:36am appointment. Sadly, Ray is very popular so the schedule is exact. Happily, my total treatment time takes about 6 minutes, with a total of radiation time of like 48 seconds or so. I don't feel anything during the treatment, i just hear a little buzzing noise that tells me the beams are going. I pray and try to help the beams find any rapidly dividing cells and zap them dead. I also pray that my skin will stay healthy and not show any burns or distress.

I will see the Radiation Oncologist once a week on Wednesdays - he (or she, depending on who is seeing patients that day) will monitor me to make sure that I am tolerating the treatments well. I will have a total of 28 treatments to my whole breast, followed by 9 boosts to the exact location where the tumor was removed. I go in every day, Monday - Friday until we get through all 37 of the treatments. As of today I have completed 4 treatments. Hey, I'm 10% to my goal! I may start seeing some side effects after 10 treatments or so. These side effects might include changes to my skin (ranging from slight sunburn look to full on burns) and some fatigue. Well, the hormonal changes and the carpal tunnel already keep me up at night so I'm not sure if I would recognize fatigue. I am thinking that the fatigue will just help me sleep better...we shall see.