Day 32 – New measurements

The pain killer definitely helped me sleep a bit. I got up feeling more rested than I have in quite some time. It didn’t do much for the pain itself as it still feels like someone’s been down my throat with a flame thrower. But I feel better.

I was able to eat a lot more this morning (a full bowl of oatmeal and a yogurt) and got down all of my medicine which felt good. It took hours but it was worth it. At lunch time I actually made myself a tuna salad sandwich and ate all of it.

Feeling newly strengthened I drove to the clinic, with Arlene, for today’s treatment. In addition to the normal treatment today is the day when they redo all the measurements on my body and on my mask to limit the radiation treatment from now on to a smaller area. This is to protect my bone marrow, which is located in the left/right extremes of my neck, which should only get less than 5 weeks, or a certain number of microns, of radiation. From now on they’ll be shooting at a smaller area which may mean just a little bit less of radiation per treatment. But I doubt I’ll notice the difference.

After my normal treatment, which lasted the normal 5 minutes or so, they took me to the x-ray measuring room. This is the same room where they did my measurements originally, the day before my first treatment, and the guy carrying out the measurements was also the same. A very nice gentleman who appears to be of Indian or Pakistani origin but probably more French than I am. It was supposed to take about 30 minutes. That doesn’t sound like a big deal to most people. But lying completely motionless for 30 minutes is actually quite a lot of work on the muscles. I clench my trousers in my hands so as to pull my shoulders down towards my toes, my neck is turned to the left, my torso is placed in a particular position and my waist is slightly tilted in the opposite direction. Added to the fun is the mask which is, as always, latched down in 3 points (left, right and above the head) so my head isn’t going anywhere. I started sweating probably about 20 minutes in to the procedure as it really is quite strenuous. In addition I believe my muscle tone has greatly diminished along with my weight. However just when I thought it would be over soon the technician picks up the phone and starts asking questions to a doctor about the planned measurements and projected radiation treatments. I can’t actually see any of this as my eyes are closed under the mask. However I can hear their discussion. Next thing I know there’s someone else in the room with us and they’re talking and measuring things all over my head and neck. Instead of this taking 30 minutes it took 60 minutes. Once they released me I got up and noticed that the doctor was actually Dr. Mammar who is probably my favourite of all of the doctors I’ve met at the Clinique Hartmann. I let him know that I immediately recognised him and thanked him.

I found Arlene in the waiting room, not quite asleep and probably a bit overwhelmed after spending an hour and a half in a room full of cancer victims, and we headed home. When I got home I was feeling tired after all of the clinic activities and I slept for a bit.

Dinner was fish with rice and peas and I was able to eat a full plate’s worth. It was most gratifying.

Arlene had never seen Shark’s Tale before and we had listened to a couple of songs from the soundtrack in the car. We therefore watched Shark’s Tale on DVD before heading off to sleep.

Overall a better day than the day before…