Lloyd is dead!!!

A and C and family:  Thank you so much for the beautiful flowers and delicious cupcakes!  You are so thoughtful!  Daughter A was particularly touched that her friend's family sent us something, so that was extra special for us.

A, my new sis:  Thank you so much for the timely turtle bracelet!!  It's soooo adorable!  I'm not taking it off all week.  I love you!

Spouse, Dad, Mom, Mom, Sis, Sis, Unc (the waiting room crew):  Thank you so much for being there with me yesterday.  It truly is special to have a waiting room full of loved ones helping you wait for the procedure to start and ready to hug you when you come out from a procedure.  The doctors and nurses were impressed; I was impressed; and your love helps me to recover!!!

MIL:  Thank you so much for taking care of my daughters yesterday, including the extra mile you went to honor the tooth that fell out yesterday.  Thank you for filling my gaps and leaving none for them!!  Also, thank you for the marvelous healing footrub last night.  You have a gift, dear.  I deeply appreciate that you share it with me. 

We did it.  We blasted Lloyd.  I was so nervous that I forgot to take my phone with me to the procedure room, so I have no pictures despite my intention to take some.  Fortunately, there's not really much to see, and I couldn't have taken pictures during the thing anyway.  I have pictures of the room from my previous radiation treatment 7 years ago, if you're curious.

Here's how it all happened:  First, my sister gave me a picture of my brother and I on our hike from a few years ago, so I had my brother in my pocket the whole time, and a reminder of the fun things I do when I'm not fighting cancer.  Then, a nurse took me back to a big room that was mostly empty except for a long flat table and a big open tube.  The end of the table near the tube had those trusty blue brackets attached to the end, with the back of my mask in the bottom.  I didn't even have to change, I just laid down with my head in the brackets.  With scant time for a deep breath, they were applying the front of the mask and fixing my head into place, stiffly, uncomfortably.  It was happening too quickly and I was getting nervous, so I told them to keep talking to me to keep me abreast of what they were doing (because I couldn't see anymore with the mask on), but I told them that I was going to stop talking so that I could breathe and calm down.  After a pause, the nurse said, "so what do your kids like to do?"  Ha!  I mumbled through the mask, "taekwando. girl scouts. but I don't want to talk."  I felt super rude, but I had to take care of myself, man.  Talking was painful and not helping me to relax.  Plus, I needed to calm my nerves so that I could hold still.  I didn't want Lloyd to be in the wrong position!!

After my head was in the mask (cage is really a better word for it), they put a box over my mask and shot an x-ray to make sure that everything was in the right position.  The x-ray looked great apparently, so they removed the x-ray apparatus and prepared the first radiation apparatus.  The radiation beam is shot through a hole in a tube, and a metal cone is screwed onto the tube to focus the beam as needed for the radiation plan.  You'll be happy to know that there are lots of checks and balances to make sure the right cone is screwed on for the treatment plan.  After the nurse screwed on the cone, she scanned a barcode that made a happy little bleep bleep to confirm that yes, this is the cone for this treatment for this patient.  I liked the bleep bleeps.  Then they all left the room and the first anti-Lloyd blasts began!  And this is the weird part because from what I can tell the beam doesn't move very much, but the bed does.  I felt like I was cruising around a dance floor, jostling this way and that, which was actually pretty uncomfortable because my head was locked into place, so every tiny ridge in the floor tapped the bridge of my nose, my temples, my eyebrows.  I'd love to see how much the bed actually moved, because maybe it wasn't all that much, but I know I moved fully across the room at least once because the decorative pot lights along the walls were blazing through my closed eyelids at one point.  The center of the room was devoid of pot lights, and I had asked for lights out.  So I know I moved around a lot, and this humors me.  My anti-Lloyd waltz!

The anti-Lloyd blasts themselves:  I couldn't see them or feel them, but I could hear them.  Or maybe I could just hear the buzzing of the machine that produced them, I don't know.  But the blasts were accompanied by a light buzzing sound, not inside my head but captured by my ears.  I could hear each of the three blasts, and they seemed to move in an arc around my head, but that's only judging by sound so I have no idea if that actually happened.  Also, I'm pretty sure I was perfectly still during each blast; I think that the movement of the bed was to re-position me between blasts.  These three blasts took only 10 minutes total, then the team came back in and we repeated the cycle:  another x-ray to confirm position for the second blasts, then the second round of 3 blasts.  That was it!  The whole thing took about an hour.

Interestingly, I was REALLY uncomfortable throughout the procedure.  I mean, not like hard-chemo uncomfortable or surgery uncomfortable, so let's keep this in perspective, but it ended up being a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.  The mask actually hurt quite a lot (on the day that we made it, it was uncomfortable but not painful), and the pain was manifesting as pain in Lloyd itself.  It was so weird.  The mask pain was actually caused by pressure against the back of my head by my mask, which was was making my neck stiff on the left side, and this was causing a weird sensation inside my head.  When we weren't actively scanning or zapping or doing anything else that required me to be perfectly still, I took my deep yoga breaths to try and relax my neck, which helped my mental game over the pain but actually increased the physical pain in the back of my head (because I was essentially relaxing my body into a pillow that wasn't there).  It was quite the predicament!  But certainly a short predicament that had to be overcome, and I knew I was actually fine.  I just had to breathe through the discomfort for a few more minutes, then it would be over, and it was! 

It turns out that I think Lloyd got the best possible anti-Lloyd treatment.  First of all, at least twice during the procedure I was told that my pictures were lining up perfectly.  Maybe they say that to everyone to give them piece of mind, but I doubt it.  Huzzah to me for being consistently still during my scans!  And huzzah to the mask for keeping my head perfectly in place!  And most importantly, huzzah to Dr. Phys for coming up with such a terrific anti-Lloyd SRS treatment!  He said that he spent over 12 hours coming up with the plan, tweaking it to make it better and better.  He said that originally it was going to be 1.5 hrs with 3 planes (maybe "planes" isn't the right word? I don't know the lingo, and he was telling me this right before the treatment so my mind was mushy with nerves), but then with further tweaking he got it down to just 2 planes and 1 hr.  This is incredible news not just because the treatment was faster, but because it means less collateral damage to my brain.   Essentially, he was able to target all of Lloyd with fewer beams than expected!  The less radiation that went through my healthy brain, the better!  Thrilling!!!  Thank you, Dr. Phys!!

I saw Dr. Rad Onc briefly yesterday, and he said that everything looked terrific.  He said he'll see me in two weeks, but to call before that if I notice anything weird.  I asked him for some hints on what I should look for, and he said difficulty finding words, different headache, any neurological symptoms at all.  But I definitely picked up a no-big-deal vibe from him.  My non-scientific impression from conversing with him is that this all went so well that he's really not expecting anything adverse from me.  I could be reading more into something that isn't there, but I don't routinely get this impression from doctors so I'm hopeful. 

I'm doing my part to prevent adverse reactions:  I slept in until 10; ate oatmeal with raisins, pecans, and coconut on top; went for a walk with the spouse and dog; and am preparing for a nap after this blog post (and a bowl of cabbage soup).  My body feels terrific but I know that I must force myself to rest, because that is what my brain needs!  I do have a slight headache, but it's not different than before treatment.  My brain has got all sorts of problems that can only be solved by rest and time. 
   
Thanks for being here with me! <3