Surviving Cancer and other Potholes

“May your choices reflect your hopes not your fears”- Nelson Mandela

AS I drew closer to my chemo finish line I wished I could throw my body over it and complete the race like Shaunae Miller’s Gold at Rio,but Cancer is a marathon race not a sprint, there are steps that have to be taken and hurdles that must be crossed before being even close to completing the race, and by completing I mean surviving.
One such hurdle I was being faced with as the curtains on my treatment were coming down ( just 2 more left! ) was that of my next move : radiation/ radiotherapy. I had been so consumed by the chemotherapy that I had not examined in detail what radiation would entail.
Radiation therapy is one of the most common treatments for cancer. It uses high-energy particles or waves, such as x-rays, gamma rays, electron beams, or protons, to destroy or damage cancer cells. Other names for radiation therapy include radiotherapy, irradiation, or x-ray therapy. Other drugs are used along with radiation;these are called radiosensitizers, eg. Chemo. This means they can actually make the cancer cells more sensitive to radiation, which helps the radiation to better kill cancer cells.
There were three ways in which radiation can be given; as far as I was aware I would be having the external (beam) radiation at the Cancer Institute. External radiation (or external beam radiation) uses a machine called a linear accelerator (often called a “linac” ) that directs high-energy rays from outside the body into the tumor. In my case the tumour had been removed via surgery and this would target the area where the tumour was as well as the surrounding lymph nodes.
The dose needed to kill the tumour or affected nodes is too strong to be given at once. The total dose of external radiation therapy is usually divided into smaller doses called fractions. The most common way to give it is daily, 5 days a week (Monday through Friday) for 5 to 8 weeks. Weekend rest breaks allow time for normal cells to recover. I recall Devika telling me her radiotherapy lasted approximately 30 days, 5 days a week for 5 mins each. She related to me how fatigued and tired she would feel after her sessions which were pretty painless but the weak feeling would come on after,
thus leaving her to spend most of her days in bed. Of course this was only temporary but it did take a few months before Devika regained her ‘normal’ energy levels.
Radiation itself didn’t scare me but did this mean I would be radioactive? Like should I stop using the microwave and my cellphone? Sounds funny but here are some possible side effects:
1. Fatigue (in part due to energy expended in replacing normal cells killed in the process)
2. Skin irritation, redness, lesions, peeling
3. Hair loss
4. Loss of taste
5. Erectile dysfunction
6. Decreased blood count (may be monitored by the clinician overseeing the treatment)
7. Increased susceptibility to infection
8. Difficulty swallowing and decreased appetite
9. Oral mucositis (cells of the mouth rapidly dividing)
10. Younger patients receiving radiotherapy are more likely to develop secondary tumors because of their longer post-treatment life span.
11. Large tumor masses often contain oxygen-poor cells in the centre that are resistant to radiation therapy and therefore not affected by the therapy.
Well at least I know I can cross out erectile dysfunction ( ha ha) but only by doing it will I be sure of how my body reacts. I still had two more cycles of chemo to look forward to before becoming a walking radioactive biological hazard ( i joke). It was still a long way away from what was going on; my chemo side effects had decreased after the second week of my last (5th) session;well all except the hives which I had still not adjusted to – would you adjust to random spurts of itching all over your body all day? Yeah I think not, definitely the worse effect ( aside from the vomiting) I have dealt with thus far;I doubt the radiation can beat this but only time will tell.

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