#TheSundayPost Love is in the Air? Or is that Football?

 

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted here @ Caffeinated Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news~ A post to recap the past week on your blog and showcase books and things we have received. Share news about what is coming up on our blog for the week ahead.  See rules here: Sunday Post Meme

Will you be watching the football game today?  I'm a commercials person. My husband likes the game. I'm sure he'll be watching and I'll be reading a book!  

Today 2/7/2021 is the one-year anniversary of my last radiation treatment.  I sure do hope I live a nice long rest of my life into my 80s and beyond and never need any sort of cancer treatment again. For what it's worth, radiation is a walk in the park compared to surgery and chemo, but it is still rough.  My skin will never be the same, but the trade-off was hopefully very worth it. 

I plan to spend some time today in the kitchen with the microwave reminiscing about the good old radiation days. Ha!

Coming up on 2/9 a book I reviewed The Rakehell of Roth is being released. If you liked Bridgerton on Netflix, I think you'll like this book even more than that!

So how about you?  Do you have plans for the big game?

Guess Who's Done With Radiation?

Yes, you are correct! Today was my last radiation treatment. I hope to not ever need to repeat the experience. If you were to see me, you might be disappointed that I don't seem thrilled.  I am, it's just that I am still dealing with a stupid cough from a dumb cold.

Rest assured, should you or a loved one ever need radiation, the most trying part of the experience will likely be just the day in day out drag of it all. Fun radiation fact, nurse Hope told me today that radiation continues to work in your body for two weeks after you finish treatment.

I would like to take a moment to brag. Today, the technicians told me- and it was not for the first time, that I have amazing skin and in fact,  technician Theresa said my skin hand held up wonderfully and she has only seen a handful of patients that looked as good as me by the end of the treatment.

I said to The Man: "Apparently my body is made to really ace cancer treatments." He looked at me like I'm a few cards short of a deck.

Would be very nice if my body could also like not allow cancer cells to hang out and build themselves into a mass again. I've already committed to doing my part through eating healthy, regular exercise, and not taking up vaping; I just need my biology to also commit to staying cancer free!

Treated myself to a celebratory Mug Cake courtesy of  Becky McNeill in one of my Snoopy mugs. 

Now 12 days and I'm back at the hospital for a preventative Bilateral Salpingectomy  What a February, eh?

Happy First Friday of February 2020!

Two down and Three to go!

That is two weeks of radiation down and three weeks to go. Side Effects?  It's hard to tell if I am fatigued in January.  I find January itself fatiguing.  Too much cold and dark for my tastes.  Now to be fair to this particular January, we have had mild for Chicago temperatures with most days at or above freezing during the day.  Nevertheless, cold is fatiguing even when it is not cold enough to snow.  

Today for fun I was trying to convert how much radiation I get daily in the about 10 minutes of laser-blasting compared to a vacation in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.  What?  You didn't know Chernobyl is a popular tourist destination? It is, in fact, popular, especially now that HBO has aired an award-winning drama about the nuclear disaster.  

Since the area has had little human exposure for several decades, nature has flourished and it is quite beautiful.  Can you eat fruit and vegetables grown there?  I mean, you could.  There is a fantastic documentary called The Babushkas of Chernobyl about these little old ladies who were forced to leave their homes in the wake of the disaster and how they snuck back to their villages and were allowed to live out there days in the exclusion zone. Their ties to the land are so strong they would rather die than leave the land. 

I was bummed to learn there are several different scales used to measure radiation so what I thought would be quick Google search was not quick and I don't have my answer.  Lucky for me, I will see my Radiation Oncologist on Monday and will be sure to ask her. 

Happy Friday!  Snow is piling up outside but it is supposed to rain tomorrow and I am very glad I don't have to go to work in the morning. 

Where Is My Medal?

Man-o-Man yesterday was a long day for me! Good thing it was Friday. If it had been a Tuesday and I still had the rest of the workweek ahead of me, I might have cried.  I had scheduled to do a Secret Shop after my radiation.  Wouldn't you know that the one day I had a time-sensitive errand is the day that the radiation appointment took literally three times as long as usual? 

I made it to the secret shop with about 20 seconds to spare and then the shop took just under two hours. Ideally, it would have taken  40 min. So that was longer than expected. 

But then we get to the real trying part of my day.  I went to Jewel at 6pm on a Friday.  That's just crazy. The worst time to go!  Busy and all the carts were wet because it was raining. Wait, there is more. Then Jewel was sold out of all the really good 3-day specials that were the basis of my grocery list and the whole point of going to Jewel over Aldi.

Nevertheless, I persisted. I was home by 8pm. Long day.  I would have skipped the grocery store if not for the looming "Winter Storm Warning." I was freaking exhausted.  The fact that I don't like the family to put away the groceries because they don't know how to do it the right way really worked against me. I plan to spend the weekend recovering from my very long but not bad Friday.

In all honesty, it's a delight to complain about simple things like a lack of $1.99 ground turkey.

5 radiation treatments down, 20 to go.  The universe smiled upon me this morning when I was greeted by 5 crocus buds about to blossom.

Just Me Talking About My First Friday in 2020

How did you spend your first Friday in this new decade? I had a groovy time this afternoon hanging out in the Radiation Department of my hospital.  Today was the dry run for my upcoming radiation treatments.  I am happy to report both my doctor and the nurses said I am very good at holding my breath.  I credit all the running I do.  Is this a skill I can add to my resume? 

Why holding my breath? It is supposed to help move my heart and lung away from the beam of radiation. This technique is called Deep Inspiration Breath Hold.  Very zen sounding. I'm all for whatever I can do to keep my heart healthy-- especially since I had chemo and that can impact the heart.  Like the cancer isn't bad enough!  Insult to injury and all that.

It would be great if I could zone out and listen to a book on the audible app while I am laying there with the machine moving around me, but I have to listen to them tell me when to breath, hold my breath, and most importantly when I can stop holding my breath.  So no listening to a book.

Today I spent one of my credits on a thriller that takes place in Australia.  The bad guy is killed right off the bat, so now the question is what all went down prior to his death.

I've been a member of Audible off and on for years and now is a really good time to be a member. They have a special where if you listen to 3 books between now and March 3rd, you get a $20 Amazon Credit. Then I can use my $20 Amazon Credit to buy some paperback books. You can join Audible anytime this month and get in on the deal. If you are already a member you don't have to do anything, it's all tracked through the website.