Oh my... (part 2)

So I got a call on Monday morning from Richard, the male tech. Apparently my neck positioning was wrong and they wanted me to come in and redo the mask and have a new CAT scan done. Oh my. Actually, it was more of a chin thing...it needed to be higher. As if my experience wasn't horrible enough the first time, I had to go in and do it all over again. Yippee! Let me interrupt here to tell a funny story...on my message from Richard, he mentioned the fact that we had met "briefly" the previous week. Uh...yeah...you could say that. When you've seen me half naked, I'd pretty much say we're like this:

Back to the story...I went in Tuesday afternoon and made a new mask. It was certainly as terrifying as the first time, but I did it. I thought knowing what to expect might help, and it did a little, but I still hated it.

Today I went in for what was called "verification". During this process, you actually go back to the treatment room. You lay on the table, the mask is put on (much tighter fit to the face than when making it, I might add) and x-rays are taken. This takes about 45 minutes. They line up the machine to the tattoos and then they marked all over my neck and chest in Sharpie again. I got 2 new tattoos and some pretty visible markings that must stay for the duration of radiation. They look like this:

One right in the middle of my neck and the other almost right in the middle of my chest. These markings are made with Sharpie and covered in tape so they last longer. You can actually see the remnants of leftover Sharpie all over my chest around these markings. Right in the center of each of these are the new tattoos that will be there forever. This was done the same way as the other three. That brings my total up to 5. They kinda look like gun targets. Matt thinks I should go as a sniper victim for Halloween. I think I maybe could work with that...

Debra, the nurse, told me they got my films done on the first try and that's rare. Either I'm really good at holding perfectly still or she's just full of compliments. So that concludes the preliminary portion of my radiation. The next step is actual radiation which will start on Monday afternoon. This schedule should put my last week of radiation around the first of December. There will be side effects with radiation and my most prominent one will probably be a sore throat. A lot of the side effects are the same as chemo: fatigue, nausea, etc. I'll post more about those later.

Thanks and goodnight.