Cancer ☯ Facing Death ☯ Letting Go ☯ Loss of Job ☯ Balance Spirit & Self
Cancer Meditation ☯ What Worked for Me ☯ Pain Management
Radiation Therapy ☯ Padre Pio ☯ Our Christmas Miracle
Radiation Therapy
I continued chemotherapy and radiation as an outpatient for months. The fact that I had radiation and chemo at the same time shows how aggressive our approach was. I balanced hospital treatment out with holistic methods.
For seven weeks I went for radiation treatments every day, Monday through Friday. All the radiation staff was wonderful. Part of the procedure required them to tattoo some alignment marks on my chest and make a body cast so that each time I came for treatment I would be perfectly aligned with the equipment as I lay on the table. They also drew lines on my chest with Sharpie permanent markers to highlight the tiny tattoos. We joked around so much that sometimes a little smiley face appeared on my belly or shoulder. Some of those techs were pretty good artists! All this lifted my spirits during a very trying and painful time. Lying there with my hands over my head with a broken spine was excruciating. The staff never forgot that I was in a lot of pain or that the equipment could be intimidating. I found it helpful to understand the way the radiation machines worked on my body. With my background in dialysis, I was accustomed to working with medical equipment, and the techs took the time to answer any questions I had about the radiation equipment as they prepared me for treatment. The setup was usually longer than the treatment.
Spirit was insisting that I visualize the tumor. Feeling that a picture is worth a thousand words, I asked the technician to show me my tumor from the CAT scan. My job in my healing process started when the technicians left the room. Once the machine started buzzing and clicking, I visualized the mass in my body. I saw the radiation energy as a feather brushing up against the mass, slowly wearing it down. I was allowed to have my malas (prayer beads) wrapped around my wrist and hand and I would use them in my visualizations. After seeing the x-ray film, I realized that my tumor was quite large, and if I shrank it too fast or all at once, it would create a void within me. I was concerned that my body might react in distress if the tumor was reduced too fast. Being realistic, Spirit and I visualized shrinking the mass a little at a time, with love in my heart.
My radiation oncologist, is a very loving doctor who isn’t afraid to get close to his patients. To give us hope, he told us about his one patient who had survived cancer just like mine. Cindy and I asked each other later, “There was only one?”
Well I guess now there are two.