Radiation, Recovery, Resilience, and The Petty Tyrant
Two years ago today, I completed the radiation therapy for my glioblastoma. The treatment itself lasted about twenty minutes per day, five days a week, for six weeks. I also took a relatively low dose of temozolomide, an oral chemotherapy medicine, daily for the six weeks. I started taking it a week before the treatment started and it wasn't too bad - just made me a little tired. I would check in at the desk, then wait a few minutes to be called and then a team member would escort me to a control booth and then take me to the actual treatment room. I’d lie on my back on a plastic platform that was cut out in a grid pattern, and they would fit the plastic mask to my head and then snap it to the platform to immobilize my head as much as possible to ensure the radiation was applied to the correct area. The technicians would go back to the control booth and spend a few moments running test sans to make sure I was positioned properly and calibrate the mac...