First Zapping done

The big event of the day was the start of my radiotherapy treatment at the hospital. That turned out to be pretty easy and much less of a trauma than the chemotherapy. I turned up to the hospital 15min early and they took me right away straight into the treatment room where I had to lie out on a bed while they moved me around to get the alingment lasers on the machine and the tattos on my chest to line up. Once that was done they all got out of the way and the machine moved around me adjusting its shields and then applying the treatment. I was quite pleased to see that the shields are quite complex using interlocking rods to create a very exact shaped apature for the radiation which is adjusted for each angle to protect the heart as much as possible. In any case I did not feel a thing this first time and as I write this blog a day later I have not had any side affects.

As a precaution I am keeping up some light exercise, drinking lots of water and keeping up a vitamin regium to protect the heart as best as possible from damage. My plan to cycle to the hospital was not carried out as I left the bicycles in Aberdeen without thinking I needed one for the hospital run so today I think I will try walking to the hospital and jogging back (just because I dont want to be sweaty when the radiographers are drawing things under my armpits !).

Apart from that event everything else is going well, I had a flurry of work just ahead of the radiotherapy, including meeting with some colleagues in the UK which sorted out what I would focus on when I returned to full time work. Poppy has just had her birthday party which involved four of her friends staying for a sleepover, I ended up trying to get them to sleep at 2am, 3am and 4am so I was a bit of a grumpy Dad this morning as you might imagine. My friend Shaun came over last night to updated me on the gossip from work and we swapped tales of growing up families while enjoying the warm evening in the garden.

So overall things are going well here in Edinburgh, it looks like the radiotherapy will be an eaiser run than the trauma of chemo, the sun is shining, and the demands of work are a bit lower as colleagues take time off for their summer holidays.

Cheers for now

Gerry