Radiation Update
This tree is right outside the cancer center. I snapped photos of it knowing it will change from blossoms to leaves by the end of my treatments. Change happens fast.
I completed the first five of 21 radiation treatments for breast cancer last week. I am doing well and side effects haven’t hit yet. I drive to the cancer center every day, Monday through Friday, and this makes me feel like a cancer patient now more than ever. I enter the building and head to the dressing rooms where I change into a blue hospital gown and lock my clothes and bag in a locker. Then, I sit in a room with one or two other cancer patients - also dressed in the blue hospital gowns - and wait for a radiation technician to call my name.
When it’s my turn, the technician and I walk a short, beige-colored hallway and turn left into a dim, blue-lit, Star-Trek looking room that has the giant radiation machine in the center. Even though the machine is used daily right now, in 2026, it looks to me like something from the future. Computer monitors line one of the walls, displaying scan images, numbers, and grids. The radiation machine is shaped sort of like a giant sewing machine with a rotating arm and laser lights. My body lays on a table beneath the rotating arm as if I’ve been placed where fabric would move through, but I must stay completely still. The arm above me, rather than holding a needle, has a flat, square window where an image of my chest is reflected above me. I’m not sure what types of fancy technology and cameras are behind that window.
When the setup is ready and my body is in a precise location, the technologists leave the room and talk to me through an audio system, telling me to take a big breath when I’m ready. I breathe in as much as possible so that my chest rises away from my heart which needs to be out of the way of the radiation delivery. I am told through the audio system to hold my breath and when this happens, I choose a spot on the machine or on the ceiling to concentrate on as I count in my mind. I think I am usually holding my breath for about 20 seconds when I’m told I can slowly release. There is music playing in the background most days which is helpful, and sometimes it catches my attention in a good way. I don’t know how the machine works exactly, but I know there are cameras everywhere and technologists can see me the entire time; and I know this device delivers radiation to my body somehow even though I cannot feel it.
The next three weeks will be a marathon, but when the treatments are finished mid-April, I think it will seem like it went fast. The first week already flew by. To make sure I’m paying attention during this time in my life, and also looking outward, I made a list of Radiation Rituals to complete each day:
Eat a piece of chocolate (I bought a box of See’s Chocolates to help me count down the appointments, one truffle at a time)
Write a postcard to a friend or family member
Get 10,000 Steps (the doctor says movement will help with fatigue should it set in)
Drink 2-3 jugs of water (I have a giant Swig mug that serves as the jug. How Utah of me!)
Meditate (I’ve been repeating some lines of a Kadampa Buddhism prayer I know. I try to remember to do this when I’m feeling anxious.)
Dance
Stretch
Find a heart
Write 4 lines of poetry
I decided to share the short poems I’m writing each day to give you all a glimpse of things I’m thinking about and noticing. Each piece is written quickly and some of them are more like short pieces of memoir rather than poems. I hope they’re interesting, perhaps a bit relatable to some of you, and maybe helpful in some way.
Start with this one, and when you scroll past the comments section at the bottom, click on “Radiation Reflection, Day 2” and continue on. I’ll post each day in the poetry section of the website, so check back in if you’d like to see new thoughts.
I hope you’re all doing as well as can be. Please take care of yourself and each other.
Every day I enter this room, it’s like I’ve been transported into a Star Trek episode.