The New Normal

This week was a relatively uneventful week. I went to radiation every morning Monday through Friday like I will until October 8 at Lankenau Hopsital at 9 AM for radiation. The tech team is awesome! It is usually 2 people who position me to be exactly in the same place as I was the day before, where I was when I was staged and tattooed to be. They say “93.9,” whatever that means. I feel like it is longitude and latitude and I am a ship at sea coming into safe harbor. Safe, until they run out to avoid the radiation they are going to shoot into my body. That’s the double edged sword of radiation, isn’t it- poisonous but, at the same time, helping you.

I meet with Dr Marisa Weiss on Mondays to review the treatment which is going according to plan.  We met on Monday and she prescribed two creams for me. After 2 weeks, I am getting a red burn. One called Prutect which I started already. Next week I add another cream with cortisone   Betamethasone DP 

Norman came home from the hospital on Monday with intravenous that he was supposed to administer himself!  I was here for a few of the lessons and it was very confusing and too hard to follow- so many steps. The nurses came back several times to review. Then they had to correct the port and change the bandages which they do not expect the patients to do (at least not yet) so he is still being seen by the home nurses. He is feeling much better so we know that antibiotics are working.

After radiation in the morning, the day is filled with regular life plus the additions cancer has brought- doctors appointments, this blog, great contacts with friends old and new via email, cards and calls, other blogs I now read that I didn’t even know about before. Here are a few of them: hodgkinsschmodgkinsinablogkins.tumblr.com, http://ihatebreastcancer.wordpresss.com, ihavebreatcancerblog.wordpress.com, well.blogs.nytimes.com/author/suleika-jaouad/

It is the best of times; it is the worst of times. It is now.