Month: July 2020

Finally, I am scheduled to start radiation therapy. It’s 5 weeks, every day Monday through Friday, with weekends off. I start Monday morning.

I’m excited to get this started, and done.

It will be interesting to see what it’s like. The major side effects are fatigue, skin irritation (like a sunburn!), and soreness. But they’ve said it takes a while for these effects to start happening. And I should be able to drive myself to the appointments unless I start getting too fatigued. And I should try to stay active because exercise helps counteract the fatigue. I have people who will help with rides if I need them.

They also say the effects can last for several months after you’re done.

The schedule will not impact my work too much. I’ll just flex my schedule a little to make up for the time. The appointments themselves are not long – maybe 15 minutes. But the drive takes a while since I have to come from West Seattle, what with the high rise bridge being out.

I’ve also talked to my boss about taking some vacation days during the radiation treatments – I’m getting close to the maximum vacation balance and I need to start taking it.

I’ve made a neat little tracking spreadsheet in Excel so I can cross off the days. Because I like doing things in Excel, and I like crossing things off.

I’m cleared to start radiation therapy. My appointment for the simulation is tomorrow morning. That’s the appointment where they figure out how you’re going to be positioned in the radiation machine. They also give you a tiny tattoo, or maybe more than one tattoo, to help position you exactly right each time. The appointment is supposed to take 45 minutes to an hour.

Last week I had my second tissue expansion, which was fine. I felt a little sore and uncomfortable that day but it was no big deal.

Hormone therapy is still pretty much a nothing. I had my second leuprolide injection right after my tissue expansion. This time I got a 3-month injection since I tolerated the 1-month injection so well. And I got another 3 months of anastrozole. And still the only noticeable side effect is hot flashes. And even those aren’t so bad. I consider it a nice change from being freezing all the time.

And now I know the schedule for the rest of the reconstruction process. I do radiation, and when I am done with radiation I make an appointment with the plastic surgeon for 6 weeks out for a check-in. And if everything looks good, I will schedule my permanent implant for 6 weeks after that. Or less. So if we assume 4 weeks of radiation (starting a week or two from now), then 12 weeks of recovery time, I’m looking at most of August for radiation, and then the follow-up plastic surgery appointment by mid-October, and then permanent implant in late November or early December.

And at that point I’ll be done, except for hormone therapy (which I assume is 5 years) and continued screenings. And I need to make an in-person appointment with my regular oncologist in September.

I don’t like having to have so many doctor’s appointments, but at least I can at least do so many by phone or video.

Managing radiation every day for a month is going to suck, too. My work schedule is so spread out that the only time of day that is even remotely workable is mornings, so I hope that works out. I hope the side effects aren’t too bad. Having to get to central Seattle when the West Seattle Bridge is out is also not fun. There’s no location that is easy to get to from here.

But it’s only a very short time in the grand scheme of things! It might be that I should take a bunch of vacation days during that period – astonishingly enough, I’ve built up so much vacation time that I need to start using it or losing it. Why not figure out how to take several days off during that time? It will be 20 work days total. I could take a third to a half of that as vacation and barely make a dent in my vacation balance.

I’ll manage. I have lots of help.