Tuesday, September 9th, 2014. Day 7 Hamilton

Tuesday's child is full of grace. And a lot of dairy products.

For some reason, undisclosed to me, hospital cafeterias rely heavily on dairy. This stands out to me, because, left to my own devices, I will consume, at most, a bit of butter and a trace of cheese on a daily basis. This is periodically supplemented by a giant bag of terrible processed Cheetos, for which I confess a small addiction. Small, in that I can usually keep myself from purchasing them to begin with (eat before you go grocery shopping, kids), but if Cheetos are in the house, I will pick at them all day long, until the bag is empty, I am sad, and items around the house have become orange by proxy.

Two developments: 

One, the dosimeters are now out of the picture, baseline readings having been established for the body positions that shall be employed for the rest of the treatments. Don't be sad, styrofoam is still propping up my nethers. Two, I now get to wear a lead-lined jockstrap during said treatments. 

Some might question the wisdom of using a metal of such softness and potential toxicity as testicular armour, but those people's arguments depend heavily, first, on me field testing the leaded can outside of the radiation lab, and second, my ingesting of it. My position is that lead, being opaque to electron-beam radiation, is probably a cost-effective choice, and that I can't be certain that jockstraps are gluten-free, so I will have to pass until I can contact the manufacturer.

***

I'm tired, more or less all of the time. This is a direct side-effect of radiation treatments, one that I was entirely expecting, having been through iterations of irradiation earlier in life. You shrug off the first couple of treatments easily, but gradually, you just get pooped. Obviously, higher dose treatments accrue fatigue at a faster rate than lower dose treatments, and there are some differences inherent to body areas targeted, and type of radiation delivered. 

In contrast to most types of radiation treatments, for which you are counselled to get a reasonable baseline of exercise in order to dispel much of the negative effects, the counsel for electron-beam treatments is to avoid activity that will strain the treated area of the skin. Since I'm getting total body electron-beam treatments, I have been advised to limit my exercise as much as possible, walking only for enjoyment, and to allay cabin fever.

I'm tired, but spirits are high, which is the important part.

I tried to catch fog yesterday.

Mist.