LUMPECTOMY FOR BEGINNERS . . . in the radiation room

If your DCIS is low grade and you are an older patient, you may want to go to http://www.medpagetoday.com and read  some of the  peer-reviewed article on radiation findings.

Yesterday, after I agreed to radiation, they gave me a gown and took me to the treatment room.  I saw a shiny black, low bench, definitely suitable for an upscale bus stop.  They settled me on it with a fresh blanket, and positioned my arms above my shoulders; my tendinitis was not happy about this.  Overhead was a lighted mural of branches and colored leaves.

As my girlfriend predicted, there was a strange, lumpy pad under my upper torso.  This takes a specific mold of where my shoulders, torso, and arms will be for every treatment.  

I mentioned my sinus problems, and they smilingly said, If you have to cough, cough upward.  They told me if the cough moved me too much, the machine would stop.

Then the tattoos--more road signs for the radiation.  Just three tiny needle jabs with some sort of permanent ink.  This keeps the marks from coming off in the shower.  

At some points, the bench rolled me back with my breast area under a metal arch.  Apparently this is where the radiation comes from.  It is perhaps less than a foot thick, like half a big, skinny donut, so I was not really enclosed.  Note to self: not claustrophobic.  

The whole session was comfortable and non-scary, and the staff were kind, happy, pleasant.

After I got home, I found a paper in my folder saying that the first visit Monday would be a half hour, and if I wasn't comfortable in the position, I should take a Tylenol an hour ahead.  

LUMPECTOMY FOR BEGINNERS and Don't leave the locker room without this

There are legions of women my age who know more about sports than I do.  This does not stop me from writing about hoops and pigskin and jocks.   

In the movie Hoosiers, and a million other films and books, the players don't leave the locker room between halves (or whatever) even after an avalanche of abuse, without some bit of encouragement like:
Plow 'em under! (Yes, I"m in Texas) Or Make me Proud!  Get out there and make  HISTORY!   Or Show 'em whatchu got!

The advice I get in hospital locker rooms is usually:  Put the gown on open to the front and go thru the brown door.   This is somewhat inadequate to prepare me for what's behind the brown door,  and leaves WAY too much to my imagination.   

Before I go out the brown door next time, I should have locker room wisdom in my pocket, or hidden in my underpants if necessary.   For instance:  I'm a Healer!   Some of the best moments in life are in the future!  I've got plans!  Or, to be more locker-roomish,  “You gotta play till the ninth inning, man.” * And even  Show 'em whatchu got!

What I got is a surgeon I trust.  What I got is a successful lumpectomy.  What I got is a history including  successful recovery from spine fusion despite postponing too long. (Note to self:  If I agree to more cancer treatment, don't wait too long.)  What I got is the prayer and meditation.

What I got is good-looking, active CHEERLEADERS who lived through what's in this next quarter.  I got them by daring to speak up about DCIS.   And I spoke to these men and women because they didn't keep their own cancer a secret.


I hope what you got is PLANS for your own particular future.  GOALS.  Show "em whatchu got!  


*John Croslin in Austin Kleon, 

IF I RAN A HOSPITAL DESIGN FIRM - mammo day

I just read the most wonderful thing that made me want to be queen of hospitals.  In Inc.com, an article Ten Office Design Tips to Foster Creativity.  A main theme of the article is letting people be themselves and spend their days where they can be themselves and do their work their own way.

 Letting patients be themselves is perhaps one of the two things hospitals do worst. 

In one slide accompanying the article, there are lawn chairs, and people seated on the grass!  I would have risked fewer germs sitting in the grass instead of crammed in elbow to elbow on a long banquette with dozens of others in a stuffy room before my first day-surgery in L.A. county.  And I might have felt better.

Endlessly waiting in another part of the same hospital once, I had a stunning view of the elevator.

 Interviewing at Ping-Pong tables is mentioned in the Inc. article.  Supposedly it shakes interviewees out of their memorized interview speeches.    I can't think of a reason why there couldn't be Ping-Pong in the waiting area for mammograms.  A reminder that fun is supposed to be part of life?  Instead we are supposed to read quietly and remember that we're there to stay healthy, but we know damn well that the mammo unit exists only because somebody might be getting  cancer.  Otherwise it would be a fruit tasting room.

One more thing about the article:  it mentions the need for society vs the need to get off somewhere and work intensively.  Luckily, the local hospital in the main mammo waiting room has coffee and snacks, and people do chat a bit at the coffee counter.

 But if we need a little peace and quiet or privacy to digest the latest news from the umpteenth mammo film, where to go?  Hide in the ladies' room?  There is a smaller, glaring, and much less comfortable waiting room where one may try to get it together in full view of other women marching bravely toward the biopsy room.  

Who decides what these waiting rooms will be?  An interior designer who has never been called back for "more films?"  And interior designer who gets way too much input from a hospital administration that wants photo-op rooms where everyone is quiet and never cries or argues?  Kinda like detention?

I suspect I'll write or rant more on this later.