wednesday

so i am in, i think, week three of radiation.  perhaps day 12 out of 25.  i was keeping good track for awhile, in my brain.  (i still have it all written out on the calendar one room over.) i thought it would just naturally count itself down, each and everyday, but it has already become such a routine that i hardly think of it anymore.  i do a lot of reading.  i'm on book number three.  (first was the valley of amazement.  second was the foremost good fortune.  and third is the brain-dead megaphone.)  i read on the train ride into radiation town.  i read in the waiting room of radiation hospital.  and i read on the train ride home.  occasionally i write, but mostly i read.  sometimes i listen to music, but mostly to the sounds of the train and the noises in the waiting room.  and i know the machine by heart.  not the big, back of the machine, that sits behind me and moves the whole operation to my left and directly above me and down to the right, out of my line of vision, but that 'whole operation'... that's the part i know.  the part that sends out the invisible sunburn rays to me.  and i also know the lights on the ceiling.  and the clock.  and, of course, that little computer screen with the blue and yellow-turned-green line when i breath in, hold, and breath out (which i do nine times, unless the x-ray machine fails to take the x-ray, as it did yesterday and today, so then i do it ten times).  (i get two x-rays everyday so they can line me up just right so i don't get any unnecessary radiation where i don't need it.  i guess two x-rays per day is a lot better than unnecessary radiation in the wrong place.)

i have found the quickest path between the train station and the hospital.  and that is to walk through the bus parking lot.  on one of the first days i got spooked when a bus started its engine just as i was passing behind it.  there's nothing quite like going in for your cancer treatments and thinking that you might actually really get hit by a bus instead.

many days i go straight to the boys' school and pick them up on my way home.  and by the time supper is over i am somewhere on the scale of wiped out. this is not so different than the way it's been since my last round of chemo, and they say that radiation can be tiring, but i have happily tricked myself into not knowing if it's the biking/walking i'm doing or the cumulative effects of treatment that have me feeling tired by the end of the day.  of course, it's probably a combination.  i'm just really not keen on the idea that cancer treatment can get me down (at least not for more than a few days at a time), so i'll gladly take the exercise excuse and concede to just a bit of the treatment because i also don't like the idea that i'm operating at 100%.  this surely cannot be me at 100%.  after dinner last night i could not make myself do anything more than climb into bed with my book, even though that meant leaving greg with a house full of scattered toys and dishes and also a crying two year old.  i'm gearing up to be a more active participant tonight.  i'm thankful that i have someone who will pick up my slack.

there's a light snow right now.  there's snow covering the ground.  it's one of the colder days we've had here this winter. and the sun?  well... let's just say i have to get my tan artificially.