2009-09-10 — Calendar entry — first radiation, first chemo

So, my first day of therapy dawned.

My regular time slot for the radiation appointment was set at about 12:30 — once this time has been set you can't change it. As I remember I was offered this slot and an earlier — about 8:00 slot — which would be fine for while in hospital but not so good for the remaining 4 weeks as an out-patient.

You wait outside the radiation machine room and when your name is called you enter, put your teeth shields on (you carry those with you to and from the radiation) and you lie on the bed of the machine. They put your mask on (they keep this for you — not sure why they couldn't keep the teeth shields also). You also have a rubber sort of door-stopper type of thing to put between your teeth to keep your tongue down flat.

For me the radiation took a couple of minutes for each side — a total of about 5 minutes. However in reality aligning the mask normally took quite a lot longer. Towards the end of the therapy when my mouth was really dry and the teeth shields and the rubber stopper hurt my mouth it seemed much longer.

Anyway when I got back to the ward they started the chemo. The chemo is administrated through a sort of powered drip feed — I assume powered so that the amount of flow can be controlled. Because it is powered it has to be plugged into an electrical connection — though it has a smallish battery for in-between times. It is connected to the catheter thing under my collar bone. It should last about 20 hours giving a short gap each day when I go for the radiation and am also free FREE FREE!