Radiation: Week 6 has been incredibly different from Week 5. Although I felt great all the way through Week 5 and the first part of this week, getting better and stronger with each day post-surgery, starting on Thursday, I just crashed.
Just. Crashed.
I’ve been sleeping most of the time since then, coming up for lunch with my kids or a twitter-break to break the monotony of my bedroom/boredom, but really it’s not going well.
The radiation burns are intense, hot and red and angry, and even the soothing cream sizzles when I apply it, making a foul stench that is unavoidably me.
The blisters are rising, popping up all over my chest, particularly in the darker areas hidden by shirts. So, I look fine from the outside, but hurt underneath.
The skin under my arm, where I didn’t realize I was even getting radiation until it was unavoidably burned, sloughed off in the shower when I touched it, and is raw and red and angry.
My radiation oncologist doesn’t like the look of it, and, like Angela, I’m under orders to “sit on the couch with my right arm raised or on a bunch of pillows all weekend.” Um, really? With two kids and a new contract? We’ve settled for me sleeping with my arm raised instead.
And there’s a lot of sleeping. I’m just so very tired, from my 6 week sunburn and all the cancer fighting and also, I’m sure, just being a mom. A mom who had help around the house this week (thank you, Grandma and Grandpa!), but a mom who did it all by herself last week and who by now is just really, really tired.
Tired. Of. Cancer.
I’m sorry this post isn’t more witty or brief. I didn’t think I could write about it at all. I hate being grumpy and sad and tired, but, today, that’s where we are.
In memoriam: Marilyn Nachman, IBC fighter.
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