Cody Updates by Mom

Last week I had my radiation planning appointment at Regions.  It was a banner day.  I was positioned for radiation and had a special pillow made, got a whole bunch of stickers, four tattoos, a cat scan and scheduled my next six weeks.  All of that happened in about an hour.

I first met with Dr. B about the radiation process.  Based on the size of the tumor I will be getting radiation in three spots total.  Two of the spots will be aimed at the same location on my chest wall.  The third spot will be on my lymph nodes along my collar bone.  The radiation will burn the skin so I am required to moisturize the locations where the beam will go twice a day.  The other main side effect of the radiation is some fatigue.  They say it is not as bad as the fatigue that I have experienced with the chemo.

The fact that they are sending the radiation to the chest wall there is a chance of damaging the lung.  This is the reason that I had the cat scan.  They have determined the best angles to have the most minimal impact on my lung.  Since the tumor is on the left side there is also the chance of damage to the heart.  This is a smaller chance than the lungs but they have to make sure that they are extremely careful that they have the right angles and I am completely immobile during the treatments.  To help me with not moving they formed a micro-bead pillow around my head and arm.  My arm will need to be over my head during the treatments so the pillow is formed to me specifically in the position to ensure I can be as comfortable as possible without moving.

I will be having a cat scan each week to check the lung, heart and areas where they are beaming the radiation.  I will meet with Dr. B each week to get info on the scan and also check the skin.  They will adjust the location of the beams if needed as they go.

The stickers were to help line up the cat scan and the radiation machine.  They took them away when they were done.

The four tattoos are very small black dots.  Yes, they are real tattoos and yes they will be there forever.  I have two dots on either side of torso.  I have another dot above my sternum right in the middle of my chest.  The final dot is above my left side.  These four tattoos will be how they line up the radiation machine to my body.  They use permanent tattoos because they do not want anything to fade over the six and a half weeks and they want me to be able to shower.  That’s good news.  I would not want to be around me if I wasn’t able to shower for that long.  Yucky!

Finally, I have my schedule for radiation.  I start radiation on Thursday of this week.  For the first week I had to fit into any spots they had available so my schedule is very random.  For most of the last five and a half weeks I will have radiation at 9:15 in the morning.  After a lot of talk about our drive to work and that we typically drive together we had a lot of thinking to do about how we were going to handle the schedule.  Jim cannot just go to work at 10:30 every day and driving separate would about the same as me heading to work at the normal time and running to St. Paul when I have my appointments.  Jim doesn’t need to go to the radiation appointments because he cannot even come into the room with me.  The fact that we live in Cottage Grove, work in Edina and have treatments in St. Paul just doesn’t leave a whole lot of options for an easy schedule.

So, I am now in my third week after my last chemo.  I am dealing with the final side effects.  I still have the neuropothy in my hands and it is pretty bad.  I have lost a fair amount of feeling and am very clumsy.  I also still have issues with my nails.  You can see the rings of chemo growing out of the nails.  They are ribbed where the nail has come off of my skin while they were growing and then attached again as my cells started regenerating.  I have put a couple pictures below.

The stomach issues have passed but I am still dealing with the fatigue and the overall feeling of being down.  I am looking forward to when this week is done and I am able to start feeling like myself again.  I am working on how to explain the overall chemo depression and will likely write about that in the future.  It is not a normal feeling and I am getting a better picture of how it affects the chemical makeup of the body.

Caring Bridge Comments

Melanie King|Jul 15, 2014 8:22am
Pretty much all of the side effects are temporary. In rare cases people have permanent issues. That is usually people that have more chemo than I had. It will take the next couple months for everything to get back to normal but it should. 😊