Halfway Home

Donna is get­ting 33 radi­a­tions treat­ments for the breast can­cer, so every week­day she works 5–1/2 hours then dri­ves her­self to the Can­cer Cen­ter, gets zapped, dri­ves back to work where I hop in the car and drive her home. I go back to work and fin­ish out my 8 hour day. This is her com­ing back to pick me up this after­noon, today, Wednes­day and it is “Hump Day” in more ways than one. Not only are we half way through the work week, but today was Donna’s 17th radi­a­tion treat­ment putting her at halfway through.

So far she is tol­er­at­ing the treat­ments pretty well. She has been com­plain­ing of still feel­ing nau­seous and the radi­a­tion guy has told her repeat­edly that it can’t be the radi­a­tion because she isn’t get­ting any that goes any­where near her stom­ach or esoph­a­gus. He and the oncol­ogy doc are think­ing it might be gall blad­der. Today when she went in she ques­tioned the radi­ol­ogy techs that if no radi­a­tion is going any­where near her esoph­a­gus why was the skin in the upper cen­ter of her chest turn­ing red­dish brown and why was she get­ting a mild sore throat. One of the techs took out a marker and drew a green box on her chest to show where the radi­a­tion was hit­ting. Well that box sur­rounds the area where your esoph­a­gus is. Now tomor­row when she goes in for her treat­ment she’ll ask to see the doc­tor and play show and tell.