April 15-Tax Day and Taxing Day

Today was the first of the 30 radiation treatments and 6 chemo treatments, which began with a visit to the Interventional Pulmonologist. Did a sonogram and confirmed that there remains insufficient fluid in my lung to test again, which is a good sign. I will follow up in 3 months with him. There was a sonogram which he was so good about showing me and explaining. It looked something like this and I couldn't sort out anything on it so I said, OH..I SEE.. a lot and nodded

I did find out what is his role is--it's to perform minimally invasive tests and treatments of lungs, but not surgery. Thank God Glenn did not ask him if he was at the bottom of the pyramid of doctors. He was trying to figure out the array of doctors and with one of them, he asked if the other guy was at the top of the pyramid. Glenn was quickly corrected by the one who sees himself as the kingpin.

CHEMO-Then moved on to the chemo infusion. Started with about 40 minutes of "Premeds" which are to offset the reactions to the chemo. The last one give is injected Benadryl. Sounds benign, doesn't it? Trust me, it's not a liquid form of that cute pink tablet. Almost immediately I became a well-oiled lush! Glenn and I were chatting, and finally I stopped in the middle of a sentence and said--that's not  making sense, so I just enjoyed my fog and he patiently waited. There are two chemo drugs that are given sequentially: one takes an hour, followed by the other which takes 30 minutes. 

  Glenn is an excellent "Plus 1". He hands me things, moves the blanket to a better position and held the "lovely parting gift":  a bag and a scarlet and grey blanket. 

Next Stop- The James for RADIATION. We hoofed it from the Brain and Spine Hospital to The James for Radiation. That's where they had sized me for my very own memory foam bed (which is really more like a bean bag pillow that was melted into shape). The bed is mobile and they call out numbers and keep adjusting it--up, down, back, forth, tilt until my day-glow markers match up with their zapping machine. Once the dots, tattoos and body markers line up, two machines circle around me: one looked like a TV with a bad tube and one looked like something that included the guts of an old fashioned typewriter. I had thoughts about Minority Report--I feel like that was some of the process used with their robots. Clothes changing and machine alignment took longer than the radiation. Absolutely felt nothing.

LET THE BATTLE BEGIN

After a nap! I'm feeling good.