A New Chapter

This morning I had my first radiation treatment. All went well. However, wouldn't you know I will have to drop my pants every time I have radiation? Today they even took a couple pictures of my behind. Of course that was to confirm the settings were correct. It couldn't have been elbow cancer, huh? Had to be rectal. In all honesty, dropping my pants is the least of my worries. However, it is fun to joke about. I had the radiation staff laughing with me this morning.

This afternoon, in preparation for the chemotherapy, the skin covering my Port-A-Cath was sprayed with "skin freezing" liquid so I wouldn't feel the pain when it was pierced with a pretty heavy gauge needle. And it worked perfectly. All I felt was some pressure. Then a line from a little electronic box was connected and the chemotherapy began to be slowly pumped into my system. Pretty cool, knowing this stuff doesn't have anything good to say to any cancer cells it runs into. I felt slightly "off" once the stuff was in me, but nothing I could really put a finger on.

It was about two hours later when I felt some nausea. I took a dose of Compazine which was provided to me this afternoon to take in case of nausea. It took the nausea away and it knocked me out for about 5 hours, minus a few minutes in the midst of it all where I was awake enough to eat my dinner. Next time I'll try some ginger tea first and see if that works. Sleeping the next nine weeks away is not what I had in mind.