My last blog was bullshit. No, not the one you read, the one I wrote last night. That one was my in my peaceful place. It was accurate at the time, but right now I am neither calm nor peaceful. It's my coping mechanism of "fearful wonder."
Yes, fearful wonder. Here's the thing: that friggin' radiation machine is scary looking. Yes, there are stars on the ceiling of the radiation room and little unicorn stickers on the rim that you can't help but stare at. There is also a glitter sticker that spells "bionic boob team."
And there is a bionic boom team. It takes a village to zap you with radiation. I have 8 people, making sure that beam goes to the boob and not my heart or lungs or chest wall which of course are very close to my left boob.
The entire left boob. I was hoping to get off with a smaller zap but no, I am once again in that gray area... this time, it's my age. In cancer years, I'm young. 51. Not scary young, like the poor people in the their thirties. Just because of age, they are 10 times more likely to have cancer reoccur and they have no choice.. they get the semi-automatic guns.
Like Chemo... for me, survey said no to Chemo. Because there is no cancer in my body now as far as anyone can tell, there was literally no scientific proof that chemo would help me in any way. My blood is perfect, my organs and lymph nodes clear...
Chemo would be a huge gun that may or may not hit the target but would hit everything else in my body.
Including my bone marrow and my sweet papa died from complication of a blood disease so... after hours with Dr. Rugo and understanding each treatment on the molecular level and weeks studying statistics and understanding everything I possibly could... ... I made the choice.
Radiation is not really optional though, because you actually slightly increase your chances of cancer spread just by having surgery. So you must zap the area and get any pre-cancerous cells or any cancer left behind. And when your in the 50's age range, that means the whole boob. Damn!
The day they tattooed me for all this, I was sort of fascinated and put at ease because of this team I had. At one point I fantasized about my boob having super powers after treatment (hey, it worked for Spiderrman.) I stared at the shadow of my incredibly cold boob on the wall of the xray machine with a laser beam across it and thought what a great shot it would be for this screenplay I'm writing about Vegas.
That was last week. Today... with that same cold boob I'm staring up at the real machine and wondering what it's going to feel like and what do I do? I start to cry. Not hard cry, the tear streaming kind. I'm about as stoic as a five year old. And nowadays, I am who I am. So Mark (one of my team) asks me if I'm okay and I say... "Yeah, this is just all kinds of weird. Space age weird." And then I to laugh. And that's when I knew that I'm totally going to be fine.
So tomorrow, with my 8 little tattoos on my boob, I will lie under that weird looking machine and think about all the things I'm going to do with my bionic boob when this is done. I'm going to stare at the little unicorns and think of all the women who have been on this machine before me and all the ones who will follow.
And I'll think about how my fine now is not at all what it used to be even a year ago. And I'll think about all the unseen tattoos I have from people and things that have come and gone from my life and even some that remain... wonder which ones will blow back to me and which ones were just meant to help me become the me I am now. And I will do that over and over again for 5 days a week for 5 weeks. And that's what my fine is today.
