Sometime soon, I want to blog about the wonderful week Deb and I had in West Virginia doing dinosaur presentations throughout the Kanawha County Library System. Great facilites and wonderful, receptive, enthusiastic people. And we got paid!!
But right now, I want to bring you up-to-date on my therapy schedule:
Monday, Deb and I will be at the radiation therapy center doing a "dry run" on the machine set-up. This is to assure that the equipment will aim precisely and repeatedly at exactly the right parts of my head and neck to kill whatever cancer cells may remain in the area of the original tumor -- the one that was removed during the surgery back in May.
Tuesday, if everything checks out on Monday, the radiation sessions will begin and continue Monday through Friday for six or seven weeks.
Tuesday also marks the beginning of chemotherapy. Each of these sessions (one on Tuesday and one on Wednesday) will last roughly four hours. Then there will be a break for a couple of weeks while my body recovers, then another two sessions, then another break, then a third set of two sessions.
The chemo sessions are meant to kill any and all cancer cells that have migrated from the original site of the tumor to elsewhere in my body.
As always, your thoughts, prayers, comments and love are deeply appreciated. This journey would be so much harder for me without the support that comes from so many places. Thank you. And thank you! And thank you!!
Everyone reacts differently to a treatment regimen like this -- and no one can tell me how much all of this will affect my normal activity routines.
I've decided to bow out of a number of upcoming juggling gigs for two reasons: (a) I'm not sure that I will be physically capable of performing for one or more hours, and (b) the chemo and radio docs both say I should stay out of the sun as much as possible while treatment is going on.
Drat.
I'm sorry to pass up the performances, but deeply grateful that I could fit in the West Virginia program with only minimal delay to the treatment schedule.
(I'll try to fill you in on West Virginia tomorrow!)
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All our love will be focused and aimed precisely at and around you along with the radiation and the chemo. Very potent!
ReplyDeleteGwenn :)
PS. A comment about the posting process: I always get the message "Your request could not be processed. Please try again." in red after the first time I click the "Post Comment" button. So I click it again, and then I get the wiggly letters to enter in the box, and my message posts successfully.
Randy - I tried to post a while back and something went amisss - I hope this one goes through!
ReplyDeleteI will be praying for you very much as you go through the treatments. Having so recently been through this, I can tell you that my normal life routines and activities were drastically affected. However, three months after the treatments ended, my life has returned to normal.
Your treatment, as you say, will affect you differently, but steel yourself. The ordeal is worth it!
Accept all the love and help that are coming your way.
Love from Anne
OK, Randy, go get 'em (those c-cells, I mean).
ReplyDeleteRon