How it became Now: Part 4

Waves
Cancer is like having a tsunami pick you up, toss you around, throw you down and when you are finished coughing up water and look around, thankful to be alive even though you are in pain, the landscape has changed. Everything looks similar but different. Things you took for granted are missing - like the Sphinx's nose. Things you didn't imagine together are juxtaposed. You don't know where you are supposed to go now. You can stand, but don't really feel like it.

Floor
One thing that becomes a vast unexplored territory after surgery is the floor. If something is on the floor, it becomes lost, unavailable. My shoes have gone to Siberia for a while. Slip ons become terribly exciting. I am lucky because I was doing so many squats in my aerial conditioning class, my legs remember how to do a grand plie and so I can, occasionally pick up something off the ground.

Waiting Room
The first time I walked into the radiation waiting room I realized: "This is it, I am ill." Nothing makes you feel sicker than putting on a blue gown and waiting for your turn with everyone else who is in a blue gown, all with burned flesh.
A young bald woman starts talking to me and she pulls aside her gown and shows me - her burned flesh. The top of her breast is dark, blackish and she spends most of the day putting aloe on. She has a black Louise Brooks style wig that she pulls out to show me.
It's the breast cancer women who are the Chatty Cathy's of the radiation waiting room. We talk and get to know one another and swap stories and tips. Other people are not as talky, mainly because they are sick. Radiation makes you really tired and then you are tired from the surgery and the chemo. And the prostate guys, they don't talk at all.

Fashion
There's a kind of hierarchy in the radiation waiting room. If you are getting balloon radiation (which is rarer because all the things need to line up - clear lymph nodes, no metathesis etc.) there is a kind of awe and jealousy. Partially because you only have ten treatments, instead of 33. Partially because if you get cancer again you can save your breast again. If you have regular radiation and you get cancer again, you have to have a mastectomy. With balloon radiation you can have another lumpectomy and you can have regular radiation.
On the morning of my second visit I am clued into this fact: if you are doing balloon radiation you don't need the gown. You can just wear a button front shirt. So again, those of us with balloon radiation are in a different class. I wear my zip front hoodie and my coral pashmina because it is cold, and I am afraid of being cold. As the week wears on I notice that other people are accessorizing with wraps. I have always been fashion forward, a trend setter. I become friendly with the woman, C. who has the appointment after me, she was a Klingon on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Of course, I am having radiation with a Klingon. I rent one of her movies from the 70's and she does a little strip tease in it. Her breasts are cute. C has been doing "natural" estrogen as advocated by Suzanne Summers who is not a doctor and who is famous for being on a stupid sitcom in the 70's and getting fired from it. The doctors tell C. that she has cancer because she's been taking these drugs. She can't imagine a life without estrogen.

Process:
I wait until my nurse comes to get me. L. walks me to the x-ray room. The machine bed is high and they have a step stool so you can climb aboard. I wonder how people who are ill and not as athletic as I am get on and off. F., the x-ray guy says hi to me and L. and F. set me up. L. places a big washer on the top of my breast. F. lines me up and takes the snap. They look at the x-ray and decide if it's good or not. If it's good they print it for the physicist and the radiation oncologist. The big washer is supposed to be the same size as my balloon, so they can see if I'm leaking or not.

Then L. walks with me to the radiation room. She helps me lie down on the bed and then moves the radiation safe into position.
The radiation safe looks like a cross between R2D2 and a hair dryer with a dial along the snout of the hair dryer part that contains numbered ports. The higher the number the larger the seed of radioactive material.

There's a sheet of paper with my name and the instructions - I'm DIAL ONE, port three and tube one. L. removes my surgical bra and removes my bandages and cleans me up a bit. She then takes tube one and plugs one end of it into the dial labeled ONE on the radiation safe. She clicks it into position. Then she plugs the other end of the tube into port number three in my balloon catheter. The physicist comes in to check. The radiation oncologist comes in to check. The radiation girl comes in with a Geiger counter and measures the radiation in my breast (which should be none) and the radiation from the radiation safe (which should be none). And then everyone leaves and they shut the three inch thick door because I am about to get radiated.

Iridium is the 77th element on the periodic table and has an atomic weight of 192.217 and a half life of about 90 days. A piece of Iridium is on a string in the radiation safe. The Iridium seed is supposed to come up the tube into my balloon and radiate me internally.

It sounds like an Italian slurping spaghetti as it comes up the tube. That's how I know it's coming. It bursts into my balloon and makes the liquid vibrate. It takes 12 minutes lying there, knowing I have something very dangerous in my body. Every once in a while the Iridium hits something and I'm startled and the waves go around. Because of this I can't rest. Because I never know when this bump and pop and ripple is going to happen. I can feel the liquid getting hot.

I know it's done when I hear the slurping as the Iridium seed goes back into the safe. It takes about 4 slurps to come up and go back. There is a manual pulley that they can use if the automatic retreat fails.

The three inch door opens and the radiation girl comes in with the Geiger counter. My boob - not radioactive (which would mean I still had the Iridium in me - which would be way bad). The radiation is safely tucked back into it's little bed. L. comes in, now that the coast is clear and bandages me back up. I zip up my hoodie, find my slip on shoes, throw my wrap around my shoulders and go find who I came with. Then I come back later in the afternoon to do it all over again.

As a patient, I get dependent on the routine, the washer goes there on my breast, did the port click closed on the radium safe. I am also emotionally dependent on my nurses, they clean me up and tuck me in and bandage me. And it makes the leaving that much harder - who will take care of me when I am done? What will my days be like when I don't have to go to the cancer center twice a day?

Removal
On the last day they change to new Iridium. So my last two therapies are about 4 minutes instead of 12. Such is the power of half lives. After my final radiation the radiation oncologist and L. come in to remove the balloon. I am on Vicodin, but I only took one and I would recommend at least 2. They swab me up with Betadine and drain the balloon. It feels heavenly being deflated, all that pressure and swelling going down, just lovely. And then the doctor rips out the balloon - I scream loudly. It hurts like hell. Why they didn't numb me up I had no idea, but it was the only time I wasn't prepped with local anesthesia to do something. L. applies a huge ice pack as I continue to cry. And then the ice starts working and the pressure starts working and I feel relief.

Now I can start to heal. No one really tells me how long that will take.