lighting up the night - going nuclear.

This is just so much bigger than I can contain. I feel like a bump on a log in the middle of a huge expanse of swirling...stuff. I have half formed opinions and plans bobbing up around me and slipping away.

I had hoped. Hoped so hard to get started on radiation. and it has happened. So casually too in a way. Dr, S saw me yesterday, acknowleged that the current view was brain first, then turn attention to the lungs, radiatiom, ten sessions, two weeks off then start chemo cycles and we could start today or I could come back.

So, about forty minutes later, I had idelible purple lines drawn besides my eyebrows and went down the steepest steps i have had tp maneuvre in a while - odd as most of those who use those steps are limping or halting to some degree - to enter into a room right out of Star Trek. Large, subtle lights and cool air. A massive donut thingy suspended above a base plate and another bed plate that swivels the target - in this case me - into position under the 'accelerator'.

The whole thing took about five noisy minutes after i was positioned and sandbagged into place. No fine tuning needed, we are frying the whole head as in addition to the brain stem buddy playing with my communications systems there were at least two other visitors and maybe more on a microscopic level. That's done. No rent or productivity, well, papers have been served and the marshall has a really big gun!

So it should be dramatic, with fireworks and at least a glow in the dark moment. It is actually. cool, I have been nuked! And I can't get my head wet for four weeks. What happens when I sweat?

I had actually planned to go through the hair loss thing with chemo so I could describe it and feel the strange sense I have at times of becoming both less and more of who I am. Less of what is seen on the outside, more of what really is underneath. Now, I don't know.

i think the clippers may simplify things and make me more comfortable. I'll give it a few days and see.

Then there is the other stuff. The meds.

My steroids have been doubled - makes sense as swelling in the brain appears to be one of several things i can expect. This leads to concern over the digestive and other systems so antacids are added to the line up.

And dilantin. Anti-seizure medication that for some reason sets klaxons off in my memory. Something read overheard that says NO! very loudly. On line searches at good sites are inconclusive. There is nothing that indicates taking anti -seizure stuff when you do not actually have seizures will make a difference. There are other meds that seem to require less of a life time commitment, serving a temporary purpose .

Not that I will refuse to follow treatment at all. Whatever I need to do. I am not however making others responsible for my health,that is my job.

I have decided that one nuking is not going to turn my brain to a balloon and on Monday I will speak to my neuro for another opinion. I will be a little further back from YAY! something's happening, a weekend on doubled steroids should be quite enough for my system to cope with all at once. I usually do not even take aspirin.

Plus, I have this whole new priority - nuclear medicine 10:00 a. Mon to Fri for the next two weeks.

And I will not be the least bit radioactive despite the little gremlins singing in my head 'you are the bomb!, you glow, you shine, you are the very best bomb I know!