As of today, UPMC no longer has a mask mandate. This is both good and bad news for me. It certainly makes lipreading a hell of a lot easier! But I\u2019m still being cautious of COVID and other illnesses because I don\u2019t want anything delaying my treatment. And COVID is still out there; I know someone who just had it. It\u2019s surprising that a radiation\/oncology clinic would shrug off safety measures for an at-risk population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyway! I laid (lied? No, this one is definitely laid!) down on the table while the two nurses (?) tried to find my tattoos. I think they had some difficulty. They marked the radiation area up and later put two clear stickers on specific locations so those marks don\u2019t come off in the shower. They figured out my positioning and then checked to see if everything lined up properly. X-rays were taken. I had to lay (lie?) there with my hands over my head for a while.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was all painless, which is also what the radiation sessions will be. They said from start to finish (including changing and set up), it should only take 15-20 minutes. Thursdays will be an extra 20-30 minutes since that\u2019s when I meet with the doctor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the most common side effects of radiation is fatigue. I thought it would be better than chemo fatigue, but apparently this might not be the case. Like chemo, it\u2019s cumulative. One person described it as a bone-weary exhaustion that was worse than her chemo fatigue. A friend said, \u201cIt was kind of like when you go to the beach for the day and come back tired, take a nap, and when you wake up you feel better.\u201d Clearly, everyone is different! Guess we\u2019ll see what it\u2019s like for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another common side effect is burning\/irritation. I\u2019m supposed to moisturize the radiated area several times a day to help with that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My eyebrows and eyelashes continue to come in. My hair looks the same to me but when I see people I don\u2019t see every day, they notice a difference. Taste is still crap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As of today, UPMC no longer has a mask mandate. This is both good and bad news for me. It certainly makes lipreading a hell of a lot easier! But I\u2019m still being cautious of COVID and other illnesses because I don\u2019t want anything delaying my treatment. And COVID is still out there; I know […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/fcancer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/fcancer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/fcancer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/fcancer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/fcancer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/fcancer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":371,"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/fcancer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions\/371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/fcancer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/fcancer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/fcancer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}