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I’ve thought many times during this process about how lucky I am that I’m having radiation in the summer. I don’t have to deal with the inclement weather conditions. Traveling by any form of transportation would be more difficult, if instead I were having treatment during the winter. I can pack fairly lightly. Jamie is home from college to help out. Rachel is in camp until 5P and is able to go over to her best friend’s house after camp (they go to the same camp, but different schools). My friend’s have slightly more flexible work schedules in the summer so they’re more able to help out. Spiritwise I’m stronger in summer…always have been, and lastly I’m kind of tan (not the kind of tan I’d be if I were really concentrating on it, but tan enough). The power of tanness is not to be underestimated, when you feel like crap, but are tan, you just feel better. It is not easy feeling green…but looking green just makes it that much worse.

Jamie and I (Jamie is my chaperone this week), were dropped off in Boston by my friend Renee and her daughter at about 2P; they ate a quick lunch with us, wished us a good week, and an hour later were back on the road to go home…hopefully avoiding much rush-hour traffic. Thank you, thank you Renee. At 3:30P Jamie I were at Proton. The waiting room can be a tough place to be; there are many patients who are having chemotherapy as well as radiation, and others are receiving radiation twice a day. This is my sixth week, and I seem to sit with the same group of people every day; we started at the same time, and we will finish more or less at the same time. I have watched as we’ve outwardly changed. We’re all a lot less conversational and zippy than when we first started…some of us have had some hair loss, some are swollen from taking steroids, other thin from lack of appetite. I particularly notice that some of my co-sitters have turned a deep crimson color, these people are receiving radiation for eye tumors, and they wear their radiation on the outside. It was yesterday when I was looking at them, that I thought that must be why my head hurts so much…the inside of my head must look like the outside of theirs. Tan on the outside, crimson on the inside.