I don't often sit still. I wouldn't say that I'm fidgety but I'm certainly no statue. As a write this I am forty minutes removed from what could easily be the most physically difficult sixty minutes of my life. I have just returned from a failed attempt at radiation. I was really looking forward to this first radiation as it is my final leg of treatment and I was also secretly hoping a spider would slip into the radiation chamber, bite me while I was under the laser (I don't really know if it's a laser but doesn't a laser seem cool?) and I end up with Super Powers. As I'd previously reported, the chemotherapy briefly altered my DNA which I believed could give me the Super Powers I've long desired. If intermittent killer gas is a Super Power than mission accomplished but forgive me if I was looking for more.
So today was supposed to be the day when I either Hulked Out, gained some Spidey Senses or perhaps shrunk down to a sub-atomic level. Okay, that last one is lame, probably why AntMan and The Atom never had much of a following. I eagerly laid down on a table about as comfy as a bed of nails and easily as wide as my laptop. The Techs tried to strap a plastic mask (we'd made it two weeks ago, it's looks a little like a mesh strainer) down over my head but apparently my head got significantly fatter in the last two weeks and it won't snap into place without me flipping out into some kind of waking up while being buried alive moment.
Not wanting to quit we try a multitude of alternate options all the while my never properly healed neck injury from college is slowly turning my arms numb. Only numb is not the proper description of the intense burning sensation that is moving from my fingers to my palms to my forearms and beyond. We finally get everything all lined up and we are going to (I think) start this whole radiation thingy. I lay as motionless as any still living human possibly can for what seems like an eternity (probably 7-10 minutes) as the numbness/burning sensation in my forearms moves beyond my elbows to my bi's and tri's. Finally the clicks, whirs and buzzes end. I hear the door open and a tech comes in. I pick up my head just as I hear her say "okay, we are ready to begin." Fuck this shit is the first and only thing that comes into my head. At that point my neck is absolutely killing me. My arms are so unresponsive I'll have trouble steering the truck on the drive home and my head is pounding. On top of all that, because I'd just moved my head we had to start over. You cannot begin to imagine how close I was to bursting into tears.
We did not start over. I jumped down off that 2x4 of a table and shook out my arms. The Techs were probably as fed up with me as I was with them and all of this. We decided another simulation (the same kind that I breezed through two weeks ago that seemed so simple and helped convince me that radiation was going to be a snap) would be the best measure before the zapping can actually begin. Tomorrow morning we do the simulation. Tomorrow, late afternoon (hell, just call it night since it gets dark in Maine at 3:30) we will try to give me radiation again. If I don't wind up with some serious Kick Ass Super Fucking Powers when this is all over, there will be hell to pay.
So today was supposed to be the day when I either Hulked Out, gained some Spidey Senses or perhaps shrunk down to a sub-atomic level. Okay, that last one is lame, probably why AntMan and The Atom never had much of a following. I eagerly laid down on a table about as comfy as a bed of nails and easily as wide as my laptop. The Techs tried to strap a plastic mask (we'd made it two weeks ago, it's looks a little like a mesh strainer) down over my head but apparently my head got significantly fatter in the last two weeks and it won't snap into place without me flipping out into some kind of waking up while being buried alive moment.
Not wanting to quit we try a multitude of alternate options all the while my never properly healed neck injury from college is slowly turning my arms numb. Only numb is not the proper description of the intense burning sensation that is moving from my fingers to my palms to my forearms and beyond. We finally get everything all lined up and we are going to (I think) start this whole radiation thingy. I lay as motionless as any still living human possibly can for what seems like an eternity (probably 7-10 minutes) as the numbness/burning sensation in my forearms moves beyond my elbows to my bi's and tri's. Finally the clicks, whirs and buzzes end. I hear the door open and a tech comes in. I pick up my head just as I hear her say "okay, we are ready to begin." Fuck this shit is the first and only thing that comes into my head. At that point my neck is absolutely killing me. My arms are so unresponsive I'll have trouble steering the truck on the drive home and my head is pounding. On top of all that, because I'd just moved my head we had to start over. You cannot begin to imagine how close I was to bursting into tears.
We did not start over. I jumped down off that 2x4 of a table and shook out my arms. The Techs were probably as fed up with me as I was with them and all of this. We decided another simulation (the same kind that I breezed through two weeks ago that seemed so simple and helped convince me that radiation was going to be a snap) would be the best measure before the zapping can actually begin. Tomorrow morning we do the simulation. Tomorrow, late afternoon (hell, just call it night since it gets dark in Maine at 3:30) we will try to give me radiation again. If I don't wind up with some serious Kick Ass Super Fucking Powers when this is all over, there will be hell to pay.
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