Radiation

I am sorry I haven't had time to blog. We have been pretty busy here with radiation everyday and the kids home from school.

I am feeling great!! better than I expected. I am very pleased with my progress of recovery and my hair is even staring to grow back :). I have had good energy and have really been able to enjoy the summer and the kids being home. I was able to take a trip to Salt Lake last week to spend time with family. This was a trip that I planned while I was on Chemo and it felt so far away when I was planning it, but I knew that it would come and when it did then I would be done with Chemo!!! When the time came to go I was very excited to see family and to know that I had made it through chemo.:) We had a great time and I even felt good enough to enjoy myself.

The summer has been fun, a couple of fun things we have done so far are: go to Rupert for the 4th and the Whitesides family reunion, play in Salt Lake, and swimming lessons. We are looking forward to camping this weekend, Cami's birthday, school starting and to a Mike & Jeni trip (I think we deserve one, how about you?).

I began radiation on July 14th. I know have 10 sessions done, almost a third, of the 33. I will end on August 27th, the day the kids start back to school. I was pretty bummed for awhile about starting later than expected and thus finishing later, but at least we are on the road to being done with all of this. The only side effects for my kind of radiation are fatigue towards the end and that my radiated skin will turn pink or red, like a sunburn, but if this is all for the side effects-I will take it. I have to goto Idaho Falls -I.F.-(about 30 min. away), everyday (Monday-Friday). My appointment takes about 15 minutes including parking the car and backing out of the parking lot. My "zapping" takes only about 5 minutes at the most. I walk right in to the office change into a cape and then wait my turn in a little semi-private room. The radiologists walk me back to the machine and I lay on a metal table draped with a sheet. I position myself into this mold type thing to help me position my upper body right for the machine The doctors wrap my feet with the end of the sheet and wrap a rubber band around the balls of my feet (I know kinda weird- they say it helps with the line up of the machine). Then they match up these marks that I have on my body with the machine to make sure I am in correct position. The nurses wanted to give me these tatoo dots but I opted not, just because I really don't want any mementoes of this fabulous time, so they just used permanent marker and clear stickers to protect the marks from fading too fast . I put my arms up over my head and hold onto these bars positioned right above my head. This allows for a open field to zap my chest, under arms, and neck. The machine is pretty big and rotates around to where it needs to zap. I don't feel or see anything at all.

The doctors have been great about scheduling my sessions to match my crazy summer schedule

with the kids home and taking trips, etc. I decided to sign the kids up for swim lessons in I.F. on my way to session. It has been really easy and has allowed me to feel better about driving down to I.F. everyday, I also am not leaving the kids behind everyday. I was thinking that I would have friends drive me a couple times a week just to make the trip more fun and hopefully not so tiring, but I am glad we can swim- at least for now.

More next time...