Tattoo You... er, Me

I have a lot to catch up on, so this might be a long post.

First of all, I met with my radiation doctor last week. I really like my doctor. He was knowledgeable about ibc and explained the treatment in terms of my specific disease. That was extremely helpful.

If you don't know what radiation is exactly, you're not alone. I didn't either. It turns out that radiation is X-ray beams. It is extremely targeted and the treatment is customized for each person. He spent quite a bit of time with me during my appointment explaining every aspect of the treatment.

The first thing they do is a CT scan (with no contrast) to determine exactly where everything is. They identify where all the lymph nodes surrounding the incision area are, where the incision is, where the organs are, etc. Then, they determine the radiation pattern and mark you for treatment. First, they mark you with permanent marker and then they tattoo you. The tattoos are exactly one dot. I actually asked if I could get them in the shape of little hearts (so that the radiation had to travel through love before it entered my body), but they can't do that. The precision of the treatment requires that they have to be exactly one dot.

I had the CT scan and got the tattoos the day after my first appointment with my doctor. They tattooed five spots on me: two on my left side, two in the area over my left breast, and one on my right side. I've spent the last ten years contemplating a tattoo, and when I finally get one, it's for radiation. It hurt!! Holy cow. If one dot hurt that much, I can't imagine getting a whole tattoo. But now, at least, I can say I have one even if I never get another one. I'm planning to tell people that I have a tattoo of a constellation.

When they do the marking and tattooing, they also position you exactly the way you'll need to positioned for treatment. Then, they have to recreate that position for every single treatment. To do that, they take a bunch of pictures of you so that whoever is doing your treatment knows exactly how you are positioned. During my first appointment with the doctor, they also took a photo of me for their files. Before they do any treatment, they compare you to your photo to make sure they are administering the right treatment to the right person.

I start radiation on Wednesday of this week. The radiation itself lasts about 10 minutes. The side effects that I'll notice are skin irritation and fatigue. The skin irritation probably won't show up for about 2-3 weeks. That may also affect how long I have treatment. The maximum treatment is 7 weeks. But, my treatment is designed to treat a lot of the skin cells too, so it might be shorter.

Since they are treating my left breast, they have to be careful not to hit the heart or lungs. This means that they have to design the treatment beams to go in at more of an angle. As a result, the radiation will go across the skin and breast tissue above the heart and lungs so that they don't absorb the radiation. Because that wouldn't be good. By angling the radiation in this way, my skin will absorb a lot more radiation than it normally would. But this is good because ibc affects the skin's lymphatic system, so the skin needs to be treated with extra radiation anyway.

While we want to treat the skin with extra radiation, we still don't want my skin to start breaking down. So, my doctor will monitor how my skin is reacting to the radiation, and he may stop it after 5 1/2 weeks if it looks like it can't take anymore. So, my radiation will last somewhere between 5 1/2 and 7 weeks.

In a previous post, I mentioned that my doctor was following up on the pathology report to determine if the cancer found in my lymph nodes was still active or not. I spoke with my doctor and learned the outcome of that as well. While they did find plenty of necrotic (dead) cancer cells in both my breast tissue and my lymph nodes, they also found viable (active) cancer cells. It was disappointing to learn that, but it didn't come as any big surprise. So, it looks like I will definitely be getting more chemo. However, they will also be treating those areas with radiation. So, hopefully between the radiation and the additional chemo, we'll knock everything out!

I also mentioned that I would have some fatigue with radiation. The good news is that it won't be anything close to the fatigue I experienced with chemotherapy. And, my doctor told me that if I stay active, it will affect me less. That's not surprising. I stayed pretty active during chemo and, although I did experience some fatigue, my energy stayed pretty high throughout.

My last bit of news is that I got new breasts today! I picked up my prostheses at lunch today. They look and feel great. If you didn't already know I had a mastectomy, you wouldn't know by looking at me. The cool thing is that they also feel really natural. The weight is so natural that I don't feel like I'm wearing a prosthesis. They really just feel like my own breasts until I actually touch them.

I've had a bit of fun with it today. As I told one of my male friends, "You don't get to say this very often in a lifetime, but check out my new breasts!" I told someone else that I went out and picked up some new breasts at lunch.

I have to tell you that I've been perfectly fine walking around without anything. Although it made me pretty self-conscious in the beginning, I was getting used to it. But, it feels good to have breasts again... even if they are just part-time breasts. Between the baldness and the flat chest, I wasn't feeling very feminine. This made me feel feminine again. And I have to add that my flat chest isn't the flat chest of someone with very small breasts, or even the flat chest of a guy. I had all the breast tissue removed, so it was very nearly concave (I can actually feel the edges of where they took the breast tissue under the skin). So, it feels good to have something there again.

This morning, the woman came from cleaning service that my friends at work hired for me. I can't tell you how excited I was to get my house cleaned. When I got home this afternoon, everything was shiny and clean. That's such a nice feeling. And the cool thing is I still have 6 hours of cleaning time left on my gift certificate!

Edited to add: I wrote this yesterday, but accidentally saved it as a draft instead of publishing it to my blog. I discovered it when I went out to see if anyone had commented on it today and it wasn't there. Sorry about that.