Author Archive

It’s been a long week for a short week. The heat, the scheduling changes, the crowded waiting room, because of the scheduling changes, the traffic coming up to Boston, all the people that are in Boston for some genuine Independence Day fun,…I just feel worn out, and I’m ready to go home.

Jamie and I get to Proton Center at 8:30A, my scheduled time, but do you think they’re on time? Nope, that’s right, they’re ...

Don’t know what it is about today, but I felt really crappy. Don’t know if I did too much yesterday, or that it’s the cumulative effect of the radiation; but starting last night I was feeling bad and sad (they often go together). My tongue felt weird, my head hurt, and I felt like I had a fever. I woke up feeling not as bad, took it easy (okay maybe not that easy, ...

Proton Center is down again. At Noon I received a call asking me if I could reschedule my 4:30P Proton session to a 3:30P Photon (conventional) radiation treatment. Is this really a question, or more like a redirection with a please? They say jump, I jump; it’s the whole reason I’m here, I’ll do whatever I need to do.

Jamie and I decide to visit the New England Aquarium (just a short ...

Jamie and I set out at 10:30A for a 4:30P Proton appointment, on what usually is about a three and half hour ride form Port Washington, NY to Boston, MA. What do they say “best laid plans”? Instead it turned out be a five and half hour ride, we got into Boston at about 4P. It wasn’t like this last week, maybe it was because of the holiday coming up, but it ...

What can I say…I was really glad to get home, and then it was Sunday.

I felt strong enough to go to my 8A yoga class on Saturday…very happy about that. We created a healing circle, and then my yogamates asked me how I was doing. I said that I was feeling okay and that I had just completed my first week of radiation. The group clapped and congratulated me as if I ...

10:15A on Friday was my fifth treatment, but only my second one at the Proton Center. It seemed like I was just there. I was, I had been there at 5P yesterday. We arrived on time but had to wait about a half hour before I was able to slip into the mask (it’s too early for me to start disliking this mask, but I do…got to work on that). Can ...

Proton Therapy is serious business; in comparison to the Conventional Radiation experience it seems quite formidable.

The Proton Radiation Room is huge, the equipment is state of the art…it looks like something from “2001-A Space Odyssey”. The table I sit on moves in and out of a large cyclotron that delivers a pin-pointed beam that starts some three floors away. There is music playing…whatever you want; there’s no music in conventional radiation, not even ...

I have to hold very still. My head is laid on an “immobilizing device”, to the non-medical everyday man this looks like a piece of plastic that fits your head. Certain adjustments are made,…chin up, tilt this way, tilt that way, the technicians line up my previously made tattoos, a piece of surgical tape is stretched across my forehead to keep me…very still. The technicians leave the room and step behind a ...

After a late start…of course, Jon and I got up to to Boston about 2P…moved into the apartment, (that didn’t take long), and took the three block walk over to the hospital for my first radiation session at 3P. These first few sessions will be conventional radiation, not Proton (so no mask). I was wiped out afterwards, I’m sure not from the treatment but more from the day. We came back and ...

Meet Mr. Dubenschmeimer, so named by my 12 year old daughter Rachel. This tumor has been a presence in her life as long as she can remember, and I guess she felt it should have a name. Anyway, it sort of fits. It’s a serious name, without being so ...