Yet another brand of fatigue

This was my schedule today:

wake up
walk to radiation
zap
walk home
drive to work
work
drive to physical therapy
exercise and ice
drive to work
work
drive home
walk to radiation
zap
walk home
nap
eat supper
play
read

And here we are.  In less than two days I have already had 4 doses of radiation, and although it's unclear if I am feeling direct side-effects (maybe some nausea already?) I am certainly feeling an indirect side-effect:  weariness.  The first cause of weariness is of course the multiple trips to the clinic, but the second cause is the speed-dial nature of the treatment as compared to chemotherapy.  Chemo was a lazy experience because Dr. Oncologist was often behind schedule, yielding much sitting around, and the treatments themselves were incredibly lazy with their drip drip dripping for hours.  Radiation is heavily caffeinated by comparison:  I arrive at the waiting room and barely open my book before I'm called back to change into a gown, and as soon as I'm changed I go get zapped, then I re-dress, and leave.  The whole thing takes less than 10 minutes.  It is leaving me breathless.  The side effects of chemo defined two types of fatigue, bone-crushing fatigue and lurking fatigue, and radiation is teaching me weary fatigue.

Right, I haven't yet told you about the radiation process.  I'll start with the dressing room.  It puts me at ease because the gowns smell clean like my mother-in-law's laundry instead of clean like the usual scratchy medical gowns.  I gown up and walk back to the radiation room.  It is a large room with a big radiation machine in the middle.  Curiously, along one wall are three display tables filled with snow globes, gifts from patients who wanted to add to the collection.  No one has yet been able to explain the foundation of the collection.  I get up onto the sheet-covered radiation table and lay down with my arms above my head in what I suppose are arm stirrups.  The technicians, who are all super fabulous, scoot the gown away from my left chest and tug the sheet and my body this way and that until my tattoos are perfectly aligned with the lasers.  It is difficult to lie still and let them tug the sheet; my instinct from a decade co-sleeping is to lift my tush and relinquish the sheet.   Once I'm lined up someone says "97", which I think means something regarding the position of the table or the radiation-emitting arm of the machine.  Also, someone places a warm washcloth on the left chest, its purpose to draw the radiation to the skin.  Then the techs leave.  The radiation-emitting arm moves to a position less than two feet from my view, at about "1 o'clock".  The part that faces me is a round flat disk the size of a tire.  In the hubcap position I can see lots of little metallic Kit-Kat-like bars that are always arranged to have some sort of opening in the center of them.  I have determined that these Kit-Kat bars re-arrange themselves to make a person's special radiation shape because they always move into the same shape for me, regardless of how they're arranged when I first look at them.  I've noticed that other people have some pretty complex shapes, but mine is simple:  a generous crescent moon, or a banana that a monkey sat on.  I think the radiation comes through this banana, and only for 20 seconds.  Then the radiation arm moves 180 degrees to somewhere past my left armpit and gives me another shorter dose of radiation, maybe lasting 10 seconds.  I don't know if it's still squashed banana radiation, but my guess is that the Kit Kats rearrange themselves for this new angle.  Anyway, that's it.  I wait for someone to tell me that I can move (just in case), then I hop down.  I get dressed and try to transition back into my day.  Fun times.

One of the technicians said that I'm welcome to have visitors come and check it out, so if anyone is interested just let me know.  I'd be happy to host you, any day, for the next 13 business days, at 8:15 or 3:15.