I love the smell of radiation in the morning... it smells like... VICTORY!

Well actually it doesn't smell at all. You can't see radiation either. But I felt it last night.

I got to my appointment early, the STs were thrilled - actually the strident one wasn't there, it was a very nice lady and a guy who didn't give a rat's arse that I had a late appointment.

They got me positioned and did their thing. It was so interesting. I got to look up into the collomitor as I was brought back under it and saw the shape of my tumor - damn it's big! They zapped it and then the collimator changed shape slightly and the machine moved slightly to the right and zapped me again, then the leaves changed and it moved again, this happened a few times as they radiated the tumor from about five or six different angles.

I got this funny taste in my mouth after about the third zap, but there was no pain or anything. Just this sort of rippling feeling where the beam hit, very subtle, so subtle that it might have been my imagination.

I felt a bit sick and shaky as I walked back to the car... nothing major. As we headed home, on the drive I started to get this acid reflux type of sensation. We stopped at a thruway service area and got something to eat and I was fine. I did have a sudden sharp pain in the area of the tumor as we got closer to home, I think (hope!) we hurt it.

Aside from those extremely minor events, I felt fine. I guess they have to warn you to expect the worst and maybe I won't be as lucky next time, but it's a relief all the same.

It's also a relief to be finally doing something. I have no reason to think this won't work - in fact, the chances of it working are much higher than the chances of chemo working. Sounds good to me.



Melanoma don't surf!

I lay there while being zapped picturing mel shrivelling up and dying, thinking DIE! DIE! I'm making a point of visualising this every time I have a moment to think. I sit and take a few deep breaths and picture it in my mind.

You hear a lot about the mind-body connection when you have cancer. I always used to think that the body fed back off of positive thoughts, until I got the crap kicked out of me with the realisation of how big and fast growing this tumor is anyway...

All I know is, if you don't remain focused on killing it and believe that your treatment will work, you're shooting yourself in the foot before you even start. Why sabotage yourself? What if there IS something to all that? I'd rather try and have it fail than not try and have it fail, if you know what I mean. Because then if it fails, I know that I gave it my best shot.

Anyway, they x-ray me with the treatment machine every 7 days to see if the mass has shrunk so that they can reduce the radiation field to fit it, so I think this might be a treatment that we'll be able to see progress on as we go.

And there WILL be progress.