Zap

We've now finished the first week of radiation.

Review. The basic idea is that chemo knocks out any cancer cells that might be lurking around the body. Radiation is to knock out any cancer cells right at the tumor site. Thus, if a person has no lymph node involvement and a mastectomy, they don't get radiation as there is no local site. If a person has a lumpectomy, as DKO did, or lymph node involvement, which DKO did not, then they get radiation. So DKO gets radiation.

The regime is daily treatments for some number of weeks. In DKO's case, it appears to be six-seven weeks. We'd thought this would take us to the end of August, but it's looking like it might take us into the first week of September....which unfortunately means we may not be done by DKO's birthday....which would have been really nice.

DKO has now had three treatments this week. Tuesday they just did a 'dry run', then real zaps the other days. The big excitement on Tuesday was that there was a power outage at the hospital. I got there early and while I was sitting there writing away on the laptop, the power went out and the only light in the room for a minute or two was the glow from my laptop screen. Then emergency lights went on which meant a few lights behind the reception counter, one flourescent light in the waiting area and the fishtank in the waiting area! Around this time DKO showed up.

Anyway, this meant a delay because even after they had the power back on, they wanted to make really sure that everything was working so DKO didn't get in for her treatment for two hours. We took the opportunity to get lunch in the hospital cafeteria.

DKO's folks have been in town to help out and that's been great. D has been enjoying my scotch despite my best efforts to hide it.