It begins

A pretty rotten shot, quickly grabbed with the iPhone as soon as I went into the room for my first radiation session. It would have been a lot better if the girls hadn't decided that it would look more dramatic with the overhead lights turned off, which confused the iPhone just a bit.

Still, it's a day of some importance, which had to be blipped. My session was scheduled for 12:45, but I needed to check in forty five minutes before that for induction, precise scheduling, water drinking and so on. It was after 1:00 by the time I entered Unit 6 in St Luke's and met 'the girls' I expect to get to know a lot better during the course of my 37 visits. I'd been told on the phone last week that I should be 'about fifteen minutes' under the machine, but during the pre-treatment chat this changed to 'twenty five minutes or so'. When I queried the difference, I was told that the procedure included a scan to begin with for the first two or three sessions and that this would also happen once a week from now on. The good news was that the nurse with whom I had the pre-treatment chat was much more reassuring and positive about possible side-effects than the oncologist had been. She said they had lots of experience of 'plans' similar to mine, and that, generally speaking, the only consistent reaction was a feeling of tiredness. I also asked her whether or not I should go ahead and book my flight for this year's musical pilgrimage. I calculate that I'll finish my sessions around 16th May, and the intended departure date to the Rhine Valley is the 24th. She said she didn't see why I shouldn't go away, and actually suggested that it could be a really good idea in terms of unwinding afterwards.

It was a rather disorienting sensation to lie totally still and watch the machine revolve around me, stop at different angles and make its strange noises, but at least this variation made the time pass quicker. I finished shortly after 1:30, but had to wait after that to see a nurse, so it was after 2:00 by the time I was ready to leave. I sincerely hope future visits don't take this long!

A dear, close friends from the music group took me over and back, because I'd felt a bit anxious about the whole thing and felt I could do with company during this first visit. We went for a bite to eat afterwards in the rather wonderful Food Room in Clontarf, so it was after 4:00 by the time I got back home. I'd felt light-headed as I got up off the 'bed' in the radiation room. The nurses pooh-poohed this a bit, telling me this was just because I'd been lying down, but I felt it was more than that, and sure enough the light-headedness continued at home for several hours. I'll need to keep track on this for the future.

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The magazine client signed off on the quarterly magazine yesterday, and I passed on final artwork to the printer. With that weight off my shoulders I hope I'll be able to get back to Blipfoto and fill in yet another gap which I've allowed to develop. Bit by bit, that's probably how the tidying-up will happen.