Moms Don’t Get Sick

As I lay on the bed of the CT machine with a warm plastic mask cooling to the shape of my face for the third time at Duke, I have a single tear running down my cheek and into my ear. If I wasn’t already pissed that I have to go through this again, now I’m double pissed because I have ten more minutes of this and now I have tears pooling up in my damn ear that I can’t wipe away. This time is different from the others. This time, we aren’t just zapping away small spots but we are doing whole brain radiation. I play the brave girl but inside my entire being is screaming for me to jump up from this table and sprint away. Whole brain radiation to me sounds like the last resort. It sounds like the thing you do before you are told there’s nothing else left. Has anyone ever told me that? no. Do I run with certain ideas and make myself go crazy over something that may not be true? yes. Does Google tell me I should already be dead no matter what I search? Also yes.

I walked into the 10×10 examination room with the idea in my head that I wasn’t in need of whole brain radiation yet. That I could some how talk my way out of this next step and still be okay. I have no new tumors. I just have old ones that are as stubborn as I am who won’t get that message to go back to hell where they came from. We just radiate them again and I’m fine. I know more than these Duke doctors who have dedicated their lives to  knowing the right path to fighting off cancer to earn the titles of best in the country. Me, the girl who left theater school after two years.

As I heard my radiation oncologist voice approaching the door, my heart exploded in my chest and panic spread down into my entire body. I could feel the tears bubbling up in my eyes and knew my plan of handling this well was about to go to shit. He opened the door and calmly came over and sat in the chair next to me while welcoming in my cancer care nagivator. Duke assigns “nagivators” to patients to allow them a line of communication for anything that involves their care. It’s honestly an amazing resource that they provide that makes handling all of this a lot easier but for some reason when more than one person walks into your room it feels like they are about to say urn or casket. The minute they shut the door behind them my disease ridden brain said NOPE.

I  heard my doctor ask me how I was doing and just shook my head while looking at Sam with pledding eyes for him to take over, which he did seamlessly. He began to explain to the doctor that I was doing well after my hospital visit where the swelling in and around my tumors was so intense my cerebellum was pushing out into my spinal cord causing a handful of symptoms. The steroids I had been taking were apparently working to keep the inflammation down and I was even able to walk independently again which I hadn’t done in a month. Which lead to our main question for my doctor. If the swelling seemed to be improving along with most, if not all, of my symptoms, was whole brain radiation really necessary?

He started by saying whole brain radiation today isn’t what it was twenty years ago. When whole brain radiadtion was first being used they would radiation the entire brain with the full dosage and symptoms would be moderate to severe. Today, when disturbting radiation to the whole brain he could avoid certain areas responsible for memory and certain cognitive functions to help the side effects be less severe while also killing the cancer. He went on to say he was happy to hear my symptoms had subsided but he was concerned that multiple tumors on my cerebellum that he had already treated were still causing problems and that  my brain biopsy tested positive for cancer even though it was a small spot. With targeted radiation, you are somewhat guessing where the cancers begins and ends but with whole brain he wouldn’t miss it.

I started to leave my catatonic state as he finished explaining how he thought this was the best course of action for me. As I pulled myself together, I finally asked the question that had me so worked up. I said that whole brain radiation was so terrifying to me because it felt like the end of our options. I didn’t want to do the thing that you only got one shot at so early in my fight against this cancer. I didn’t want to use our secret weapon because what if I REALLY needed it in two or three years.   That’s when he said you really need it right now.

I was so busy seeing it as the thing you do right before death that I never saw it as the thing I did right before we got my cancer under control and I was able to start LIVING again. He said this is our next option to open all the other options. This is not us throwing the ktichen sink at your cancer, this is us getting you back to a clear slank where we can manger this cancer for years to come. He went on to tell me he has people in his clinic who received whole brain radiation 4, 5, even 8 years ago and were doing well. I was so busy doing what must do when thinking of cancer and preparing myself for the worst.

Sam and I left the visit feeling like we had a new prespective of whole brain radiation. Yes, it was scary. I would be literally microwaving my BRAIN and we all know I wasn’t all there to begin with but this was the path we would take that would open the door to more options. We fry this cancer and then we would be able to start new and keep it away. I really feel it in my bones that this cancer was never meant to take me. It wasn’t meant to be the story but just a chapter in mine.

I’m writing this having had eight of my ten rounds of radiation. I’m tried with some headaches here and there. I have what feels and looks like sunburn on my scalp and parts of my face. But I am burning those tumors up and making my brain an unpleasant place to be in hopes that this cancer never comes back. I am mantifesting that I will be a story for others to not go catatonic in the oncologist’s office when whole brain radiation is brought up. I am mantifesting a second time of being a bald MILF. I am mantifeseting that this cancer knows who the hell it’s dealing with.