Radiotherapy 101

2012-08-10, 11:50 p.m.
My lovely new friend Kathy, over at kitchenblogic, wanted to hear more about radiotherapy (and she promised she wouldn�t snooze!). Now, what Kathy wants, then Kathy shall have, cos she�s had cancer, too and she seems to not like to take it too seriously if she doesn�t have to, and that�s alright in my book.

So. You already know that I went and got tattooed. Something in the style of Phoebe out of Friends getting tattooed, yeh, but tattooed nonetheless. If that Friends reference doesn�t mean anything to you, you can always watch it HERE if you choose to.

Now, there is nothing scary about radiotherapy so Ive helpfully been taking pictures over the last week or so, so you can be super well-informed about radiotherapy if you need to have it. Or you want to brag about how much medical type stuff you know. blujeansuk, you might like to pay attention here, Im pretty sure they don�t teach this stuff at whatever fancy medical type stuff college you went to.

The tattooing is so that they can get you in the right place on the radiotherapy bed, which isn�t much like a bed as there are no pillows, and no blankie, and absolutely no hairy-arsed musicians scratching their nuts and moaning that you�ve taken all the duvet again. Instead, it�s a hard ole slab of a thing, with a little neck-brace thingy at one end (for your neck) and a plastic slidey thing at the other end (which makes you think of getting fitted for some Start-Rite shoes) to rest your feet against. Its also got special arm stirrups so you can lay back nice and comfy. See!

radiotherapy machine

In the time honoured fashion, you get to take off half your clothes and lounge about in front of strangers, permitting them, at intervals, to manhandle your boobs, to peer at them and to measure them with some kind of measuring stick (that looks like it once had an icelolly on it!) and then say incomprehensible medical type maths things to each other and nod sagely. All the radiotherapy ladies are young and have ponytails and wear the same little white tunic that makes them look a bit like they work on a make-up counter, except that they don�t have orange faces and have yet to be heard criticising my pores�although, they do leave the room at one point so I guess they could be doing it then.

Because they know that being partially naked can be a bit embarrassing, they helpfully provide you with a bit of blue papertowel which you can hold infront of your boobs. You cant have it in front of your boobs for the twenty minutes or so that youre lying on the slab (probably because the evil death ray - more on that later - will melt it or something), but you can have it to make the FOUR FOOT/three second walk from the screen where you get undressed to the slab you have to lie on.

Needless to say, I don�t bother with the bit of blue modesty paper.

I canter�nay, GAMBOL, across the four foot Walk of No Shame with my boobs unpapered. Cos that�s just the way I roll. And it saves paper.

Once they�ve got you all lined up then the makeup counter ladies pretty much push off and leave you to it. They have a special yellow metal farmyard gate which they close behind them and which stops people coming in and looking at your boobs getting fried by the death ray when it is really only you they are interested in frying and not some opportunist boob-starer who has wandered in off the street. The yellow farmyard gate is only about two foot high but it seems to do the trick as nobody has yet risked vaulting it and bursting in on me. Or my boobs.

On the ceiling there�s a spyhole so the makeup counter ladies can look at your boobs without having to be furtive about it. What Id really like to do is, the very second they leave the room and close their yellow farmyard gate, Id like to jump up on the table and get my eye right up in the middle of the spyhole so when they come to look at my boobs again, all they�ll see is this!

spyhole

I don�t, of course. Mostly because:

a) It would frighten the makeup counter ladies, and they are the ones in charge of the death ray.

b) I would have to go through the whole �lie down, stay still, we need to measure you and prod you and talk about you in medical type maths stuff ways and sneak furtive looks at your boobs� procedures again and I don�t think they would be so calm and gentle with someone who has been wasting their time and scaring them by making a BIG EYE through their spyhole thingy.

c) Once Ive got my arms in the arm stirrups and my neck in the neck brace and my feet resting on the Start-Rite plate, I actually feel quite comfy and �having a comfy lie down� is one of my favourite things to do so I tend to just lie there and relax and forget all about scaring the ladies or getting fried with the death ray.

Then comes the science bit. The radiotherapy machine has got a big metal disc on which moves over the bit theyre zapping. It makes a faint whirring sound but it doesn�t whiz around and you cant see any death rays coming out of it. You know they do, of course, otherwise the makeup counter ladies would hang around, wouldn�t they? Its all a bit science fiction and Im pretty sure there�s a film clip that I could�ve used to illustrate what its like but I can only think of James Bond getting very nearly almost sawn in the privates by a bandsaw thingy and some kind of vague recollection of a sci-fi film (possibly with Arnie in it) of a very dim lady getting some kind of cosmetic surgery in a Joe 90 booth and it all going horribly wrong. Neither of these things is what happens with the radiotherapy machine. There�s just some faint whirring and a big metal disc hovering over you and some green laser lights which are either for lining up the machine and the death ray and all, or they are for doing something like this

laser guided

which is kind of what the room looks like when theyre zapping my boobs. Not EXACTLY the same, sure, as there is a little bit less green laser and quite a lot less dancing people and pretty much NO hardcore old skool electro-garage music playing. They do have the radio on, but I think its Smooth FM.

When its all finished, the makeup counter ladies come back and youre allowed to sit up. In fact, its encouraged. They know their death ray can do bad stuff to your skin so they give you a tube of aqueous cream which you can apply to (ominous voice) affected areas.

Go easy with the aqueous cream. It doesn�t rub in as quickly as you might think, which can leave you looking like a Cross-Channel Swimmer. Look, here�s me!

aqueous cream

You can see its definitely me by the lack of impressive frontage, the thick veneer of goose grease (rebranded as �aqueous cream� for any passing vegetarians), the turquoise eye wear and the wrinkly orange head.

Actually, that bit about �lack of impressive frontage� may well be self-deprecation gone kerrrr-ayzee as the evil death ray has done something a bit strange to my hacked up boob and has kind of smoothened out the scar a bit, which can only be for the good, huh?

They did already tell me that the radiotherapy would �tighten up� the tissues on that side and Ive already had what amounts to a breast uplift when I had the surgery so now, if Im honest, Ive got one perky teenage boob and one regular squodgy, slightly larger, middle-aged boob. Bearing in mind how very severely fucked up I was about the surgery I had, the end result is (whilst not perfect) at least liveable-with. But I WILL have to have corrective surgery on the other side to create a �matching pair�. Yes, that IS very important to me. If you thinks that�s dumb, then that�s fine, I don�t mind. I kind of think its dumb, too, but not dumb enough to not have the corrective surgery. If I can see a mismatch now, when the after effects of the radiotherapy aren�t even complete, then the difference will only become more apparent with the passage of time. The consultant surgeon did already tell me that the �fixed� side wont be �subject to the natural sag and droop of aging� which means that it will pretty much be perkily resplendent in perpetuity.

Dorian Grey-like, it will retain its youthful firmness, whilst its neighbour withers into �pea-in-a-sock� decrepitude. How depressing.

I imagine my mummified corpse being exhumed by some future �Time Team�, where some over-enthusiastic bearded archaeologist will marvel in hushed tones at my boob�s almost Vampirical immortality somehow transcending the grave�

�Obviously this poor unfortunate has been raddled by years of cheap whiskey and epicurean repasts. Here you can see how the brain has, at some time, been completely frazzled away and replaced by a cauliflower. The remnants of her clothing clearly show her to be a devotee of St Paula of the Yates�or possibly she died on the way to a fancy dress party. She is, indeed, a rare specimen of the hedonistic 21st century society. Oh, and she had FABulous knockers. Well, ONE anyway. The other one was crap.�

So, yeh. I�ll be getting the corrective surgery.

Later
S
x




back - forth