Day 245 - Radiation #27 (one more!)

Today was a good, fast day. It started off with work. If you haven't heard by now, Apple has announced that it will sell the iPhone 5. Honestly, I don't know what all the fuss is about. Apple is making big bucks - funneling jobs out of the U.S. It costs $8 for Apple to assemble the phone. Meanwhile the company sells them for $500-900 a pop. Yea. So today was a busy day because today was the first day for pre-orders. All those people who are trying to keep up with the Joneses. Makes me laugh.

Anyway, so it was back to back calls today. But it was a good day. I was running a contest trying to raise one of my stats. It worked. I saw lots of people vying for the prize... a candy bar. Hey... whatever works, right?

After work, I high tailed it to radiation for my second to last treatment. Nice! I was in and out. Didn't see Dan, but got to work with Andrea and Rebecca. I even saw Linea. I haven't seen her in FOREVER. Whenever I get my treatment, she's been at lunch. My blisters are getting better. Where I ripped off the skin, the new stuff is growing back. One side effect of radiation is the red skin. It's very red - like a bad sunburn red. And now it's getting itchy. Besides being itchy, the skin is getting tighter. So I am stretching my arm a lot. I'm stretching to keep the skin on my chest loose. That's the only thing that's preventing me from having full mobility now. The skin is just so "dry" and tight. The other arm is good.

Following radiation, I picked up Amelia and took her to the doctor. I needed to get her shots that I put off at her four year check up. The doctor didn't feel comfortable giving her the vaccination since I was just coming off of chemo. Amelia got two... DTaP and chicken pox. In another three months we will go back and she will get her MMRV and be all caugh up. They didn't have the MMRV shot. I wanted to spare her of more needles. She did awesome, too! Hardly a tear shed, however she did scream out "ouch ouch ouch!" We got a milkshake afterwards.

That's about it.

Fact #27: To become a radiation therapist, it requires courses in medical terminology, anatomy and physiology (think Gray's Anatomy, not the tv show), physics-radiation physics, patient care, treatment planning and radiation oncology (studying all radiation treatments that go with cancer patients). Rebecca said that when she went through school she had to create a treatment plan for a "patient" from start to finish. I also found out how the radiation oncologist prepares treatment. In my case, Dr. Marquez talks to a dosimetrist and tells them exactly what she wants. The dosimetrist then calculates the best plan for radiation... figuring out the angles and how to get the best results with the least amount of radiation to the other body parts. Once a plan is figured out, Dr. Marquez will look at the plan and either say yay or nay. That plan is then moved over to the radiation therapists who then enter it into the computer and, the rest as you say, is history. A dosimetrist is responsible for the radiation dose distribution and dose calculations.

Only ONE more treatment left!!