Another box checked off

 Radiation done! Ryan and my friends were like, "We need to go celebrate!" I'm kind of like, "Eh, no big deal. We don't need to celebrate. Chemo was WAY worse than this." BUT it's another box checked off on this list of cancer treatments. I only have to finish out my year of Herceptin and then the exchange surgery. Hallelujah! 

I ran into a lady this week at the cancer center. She was getting ready for her radiation treatment while I was heading out the door. We started chatting for a minute. She made the comment- so this is your first dance with cancer? I said, "Um yes my one and only dance." I was thinking, no I'm not doing this again. 

I saw the doctor and nurse yesterday. The nurse sat in with me first asking about my skin and fatigue. She looked at me and said, "You look like you're ready to fall asleep." I was super tired yesterday and yes I needed a nap. She also said that my skin will continue to react for the next ten days and the fatigue will last about another three months. Jaw on the floor. What?!?! No I'm not going to be this tired for the next three months. The fatigue has for sure gotten worse. Some days are worse than others though. 

When the doctor came in, he looked at my skin and said it looked pretty normal. Again he said that my skin will continue to react for the next ten days. The inflammation is deep in there and my skin will continue to burn for the next little bit. He said that by September 24-25th my skin will start to get better and the fatigue should get better every day as well. So that was a little better news than being tired for the next three months. Who knows. Maybe it will be a roller coaster of fatigue- some days tired and other days tolerable. Yesterday I was exceptionally tired. I went to the gym in the morning. I could've gone right back to bed when I got home. But I didn't. But I did take a nap when I got home from radiation and I was still exhausted all evening. I slept very well last night even after taking a nap. Today wasn't as bad. Still quite tired but I pushed through. 

That tiny line under my arm pit doesn't look like much but it's quite painful. It's this tiny little sunburn but the movement of my arm irritates it. I have a little line on my back as well. I've had a number of sunburns in my day, despite my mom's best efforts to make me wear sunscreen, and the sunburn on the back isn't horrible. My chest and back get a little bit itchy, I scratch it and then instantly regret it because of the sunburn. But under my armpit, man that one is going to be rough. BUT the countdown has begun. Ten days of burning and then the healing will begin....I hope. 

Ryan worked from home today so he could come with me on my last day. Kind of a funny story. So the physicist who works on the machine at Utah Valley was Ryan's professor when he was going to Weber State. He also sends a report to Ryan every year saying that he's inspected the machine they use and it's up to regulation. He happened to email Ryan just last week and Ryan responded with something like, "I'm glad to know things are running well there because my wife is being treated on that machine right now." So this physicist had come down and talked to me last week, just came by to say hi, introduce himself, and answer any questions I had. He is a really nice guy. When I was changing yesterday one of the therapists said, "I hear your husband is coming tomorrow." I was like, "What? He is?" Anyway, the physicist had told her because Ryan had emailed him asking if he could come by. Ryan did radiation therapy for a hot minute about ten years ago and throughout my treatment he's asked me questions like, "So do they do this? Do they do this?" I was like, just come see what they do. Anyway, he came back with me today and met up with the physicist. He watched how they set me up, and the whole treatment. Afterward we went to the physicist's office and chatted with him for about an hour. He was so good to just talk to us about all sorts of things. I asked him specific questions about my treatment and he explained it so well to me. 

I didn't really know how this radiation stuff all worked but now I....kind of do (I'm going to have Ryan proofread this to make sure I get it kind of correct). The physicist told me:  we have our healthy cells and our cancerous cells. The DNA has mutated in some cells and became cancer cells causing them to replicate (multiply and divide) quickly. The radiation damages the DNA in all cells. While healthy cells can repair themselves and heal, the cancer cells can't, therefore unable to divide and multiply. 

So I did the chemo, killing the cells systemically. The tumor responded well such that when they did the surgery and cut out the tumor and lymph nodes there were no cancer cells detected. Now as my oncologist pointed out, he made a pen dot on a piece of paper and said, "How many billions of cells are right there in that dot that I can see with the naked eye. How many more are there that I can't see." So while they're confident that they got all the cancer cells in surgery, there could've been a microscopic Her2 cell that was stuck to my chest wall. So this radiation will then kill the remaining cells that are hiding. 

It was a very interesting conversation. He's a very smart guy and he had a lot of information, some of which went over my head but I was able to keep up with him for the important parts. 

So I rang a gong, which was way louder than I expected, and received a certificate for "graduating." 

There was a lady on the other side of the waiting room wall who stood up and walked over to see what the loud noise was when I hit the gong. It was pretty funny. I think I freaked everyone out in the waiting room.