Friday, June 26, 2009

School's Out!

25 June 2009

My desk, dark sea to the left of me, sleeping Sarah to the right

Tomorrow is my last day of Radiation and Chemotherapy. I’ve been feeling a rising sense of excitement since Monday. On the one hand I’m expecting all the side effects to get worse and worse and on the other hand I’m too excited to either feel it or notice them.

It also happens to be the end of the school term, school holidays start tomorrow. How perfect. I'm on holiday and so are my kids!

Yesterday as I lay on the treatment bed waiting for the Radiation to start I thought to myself, “I wonder if I’ll ever do this again?” I then decided “no” and savoured every moment of it as if it was my last time ever to get ‘radiated’ . I did the same today and tomorrow I’m going to eat up every second of it.

When I look back at the weeks before I began this treatment I remember how conflicted I was. I had come across the criticisms of Radiation and Chemo and was considering not going through with it. It was a very difficult crossroads for me. I could appreciate and understand why people saw Radiation and Chemotherapy as poison and harmful and not geared in any way towards healing. In fact the one description that resonated with me was the idea that surgery, radiation and chemo did not heal the body from the cancer, it merely treated the tumour. Again the idea that allopathic medicine is myopic in it’s focus on the symptom and not the cause. So what led me to go through with it?

I remember going to the hospital to have my mask fitted a week before the treatment was to commence and meeting the Radiology Team who were going to treat me. They were and are an incredible group of people. All women as it turns out. When we drove away after the mask fitting it was suddenly a non-issue for me. I would do the radiation and chemo. It just felt like the right place to be and it has been.

My dear friend Daron came along one day and shot a whole sequence of photos of the radiation process. You can view them on my flickr photo-stream.

Hooray!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Llwelyn, I read and I feel for you. My friend Maro had breast cancer, mastectomy the lot and I sat next to her with each session of Chemo and radiation ... and it changed my life as well.
The more I come in contact with cancer, the less I understand it and the more and the deeper I feel.I see that the more it eats away at the flesh, the greater and the more beautiful and stronger the spirit grows and I know there is so much to be grateful for.
I send you and your family my love. I know that the moments of each day count more than they ever have and beuty is more beautiful. May you all embrace one anothers spirits with infinite care and love.
Be strong always.
Annalie Antoniades