Healing by Brown Theresa;

Author:Brown, Theresa;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Published: 2022-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty

Slow Burn

People had told me radiation would make me tired. I’d also heard stories about patients getting terrible burns from the treatments, but those were from years ago, before radiation oncologists learned that smaller, targeted doses prevented disease recurrence just as well as much larger ones.

The techs had drawn crosses on my chest to aim the beams, and I worried the crosses would come off from sweating during my bike rides to and from treatment. They reassured me that the crosses could be reapplied as often as needed. They had also created a mold of my body that would help make me more comfortable and minimize movement during treatment. I lay down on the mold on the narrow table, the techs adjusted the beams of radiation, and the drum of the big machine rotated around me. The process itself took about ten minutes. I brought my ugly shirt every day and every day I changed into and out of it, before and after treatment, in one of the two small dressing rooms set off from the main treatment hallway. The techs were always, or nearly always, right on time.

Except for the two mornings each week that I worked out, I made no plans for before or after treatment. If I had planned to get together with a friend and ended up being too tired, I would have had to cancel, and I didn’t want to have to apologize to anyone.

Treatment was at eleven a.m., I think. That was my time. Let’s Make a Deal was always wrapping up on the TV when I checked in. Was anyone ever offered a deal to have her cancer go away? I sat out in the hallway and worked on the New York Times crossword puzzle. Sometimes I read a book, occasionally a magazine I brought with me. The maternity department was located kitty-corner to RadOnc and I watched couples go in together, the women’s bellies swollen, the men hovering attentively. I studied the geometric pattern of the carpet and listened to the player piano in the hospital’s first-floor atrium. The machines used for radiation treatments are heavy, so RadOnc departments are often in hospital basements. This department was no exception, but the comfortable chairs in the hallway were a cheerful cherry red and I enjoyed watching patients, staff, housekeepers, and maintenance workers come and go.

My goal had been to ride my bike to and from treatment at least four out of the five days of treatment the whole four weeks, and I did. I was not trying to prove that I’m tougher than cancer, not exactly. I am not Lance Armstrong, obviously, who we now know is a doper and a liar anyway. His book is called It’s Not About the Bike, but for me it kind of was, because riding my bike to and from treatment made me feel alive. The idea of driving to the hospital every day, parking, getting treated, leaving the parking lot when I was done, and driving home again, made me feel depressed before I even started.

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