Part IV

There was a physicist who was part of the radiation team, Lee. He was from the South and had an easy way about him. He was calming. He made me lead lung shields to protect my lungs. I was so embarassed as I had to be topless for all this and much of the time I had a hospital gown and panties only on. They had to take pictures of all my purple ink radiation markers. The ink ruined some of my clothing. I was now having to buy new clothing. By the time the radiation was over I had lost nearly thirty pounds. The radiation machine, the XK Linear Accelerator I believe was the technical name, was huge. It reminded me of my refrigerator and to this day I believe radiation has a smell. Whenever I opened the door and hit the steps going down the smell would get in my nose. It made nauseous. They started with the chest first since the tumor was rapidly growing. My voice was very hoarse and actually I thought it was sexy. As the weeks went on my tumor swelled before dying and my chest hurt. I coughed a lot of the time. My son was brought toys from other people who worked there. My mother had to drive me, I was not allowed to drive, or capable of driving. She was not happy about that and let me know. I began to look for a place I could send my son and found a summer pre school camp. I enrolled him and he cried when I dropped him off telling me he hated that place. I told him I was sorry but I didn't think he should see the cancer patients that I was seeing. At times it was scary. People who looked at death's door. I wondered, will I look like this someday? I met two other young women who had MY disease. I had no choice but to identify myself by this disease because my life was revolved around trying to get rid of it. Susan had had chemo many years earlier and hers had relapsed. She was getting heavy radiation in hopes of killing it that way. She knew she would be sterile from the radiation and that bothered her. She was married and I never saw her husband with her. The other girl Sandra was also married and she was similar to me. I noticed the doctors tried to keep us apart but we kept talking every chance we got. They both envied that I had a child. Once a week we met with the radiologist after the treatment. I have to honestly say that I blocked out much of what he said. They were not happy that my tumor was shrinking slowly and there was some small ones in my neck that were not shrinking at all. It was going to be a long summer. I didn't know it then but I would end up having 58 radiation treatments. I would be so ill that I couldn't have chemo and they would save that for WHEN it came back. There was much discussion about that but in the end I think the decision not to give me chemo then probably contributed to my survival. Physically I have never felt the same as I did post disease and radiation. I had one goal then: to see my son grow up.