Day 4

One day a week during radiation will always be doctor day. Today was such a day. My sister Karen was my volunteer driver.

Since it was see the doctor day naturally today was the first day they were running behind schedule in radiation. Plus also my pal Bruce deserted me for treatment room two but he was still very friendly which was nice. The new guy was cool too. Anyway somebody from the doctor's office came looking for me but Karen was able to say I was in treatment and would get to them as soon as possible. When she told me I thought wow! Somebody came all the way downstairs and across the whole building to get me? (That there is called foreshadowing folks). They must be in a hurry!

After treatment we rushed out and were going to head straight up to the next floor where I've always seen Dr Kobeleva without checking in at main registration. Luckily my good girl surfaced and I did try to check in. Turns out once you're in treatment you see the doctor in the same area as the radiation takes place not on the floor above. So we rushed back there just as if we actually had a clue what we were doing!

It's hard being hospital directionally challenged. In our defense, there were no coloured lines on the floor or wall AT ALL!

Also in the TMI category the toilet refused to self flush for me and the person before me but I don't take any responsibility for that. My bladder has to be full every day for this jazz so they need to get right on that or put up a sign for the secret flush lever code.

So I finally got to meet my nurse Jean. She's super nice and I like her. She left and just as Dr Kobeleva came in the room Karen had to leave cause our parking time was up. Dr K smiled nicely and shook my hand. Then she said: "My nurse tells me you have some dgjjugds?"

Dr Kobeleva is very very Russian. I am normally very good at understanding people with accents. Why just yesterday I held a complete conversation with a German lady about her son's cat. The cat's name is Toddy or Toddles but you see it didn't matter one bit yesterday so I smiled and nodded and repeated words that I could understand. Today was different. It mattered very very much to me that I understand what Dr K was asking me. Because yes it was a question and it required a response of some kind.

I burned through two polite "pardons" and always got "You have some gdsfhncf?"

Gerkins? I wanted to ask but I doubted pickles were on tap conversationally and had no recollection of any sandwich enhancement related talk with nurse Jean.

I was heading towards begging for a paraphrase when it hit me. "Wuestions." Her nurse told her I have some questions! Yes! Yes! I have some questions! Right here on my little recipe file card that I'm clutching damply.

Questions!

Things went better from there. She continued to talk to me like I was a fully functioning adult! And I relaxed into her accent and we were fine.

There was much talk of sitz baths and creams and how raw I'm going to get. It's already time to stop using toilet paper before it gets sore. She said she is sorry but she thinks radiation to the vulva is the worst kind there is but then she caught herself and said that neck might be equally bad. Note to self: Sunblock on neck at all times.

She said she is sorry and I told her I have a lot to live for so it's worth it to me. [So far anyway]

I think I finally understand why the bolus is not placed exactly where the tumor was. She even drew me a little diagram. (It's important to use different media with the learning challenged) Turns out radiation only hits your outer skin at about 30 percent strength so if they need to go full bore to the skin they place the bolus as a fake layer of skin so that when it hits the actual skin it will be at full strength and more radiationy. Shut up it's a word look it up. (Scrambles to add radiationy to Wikipedia)

That's why they don't need to place it over the actual tumor area because thank God, my ahem, thicker legs act as a bolus for that area hence a less embarrassing treatment time. That's the good news. The bad news is that the tops of my legs are going to hurt pretty bad too. Oh well. There's always pirates grog and ice cream if I need it!