Lauren's Cancer Journey pt 2

Waiting to find out what (and where) Lauren's treatment would be was a frustrating time. Between us, we drank quite a bit of wine and watched too much TV while we waited. Maybe we were afraid of going outside in case of somebody running up and diagnosing LT with another illness. Maybe we just weren't really ready to deal with what our future could be. Either way, detaching the brain via TV and alcohol was a popular pastime.


In the end, the surgeon referred us to a local oncologist who was confident he could design a radiation-only (that is, no chemo) treatment plan for Lauren's cancer site. It was a great relief not to be sent to a far-flung capital city to be treated, but the relief faded quickly as we braced for another medical professional to enter the scene and demand consultations.


Something about his job as oncologist must have upset him, because he was morbidly obese. His face was an almost-perfect square, like it had been extruded upwards from between his shoulders, and he possessed no visible neck. His chins undulated gently as he spoke.


"What we're going to do is called hyper-fractionation, darling," he explained to Lauren. It meant having lots of small, high doses of radiation, rather than ones spaced a couple of weeks apart. In fact, he told us, LT would be getting blasted daily, starting January. The plan would run for seven weeks and, yes, there would be side effects. Thyroid damage, a sore throat, skin damage, hair loss, loss of taste sensation and nausea were likely, he said. These, it would later turn out, would be the tip of the iceberg (if icebergs were made of debilitating pain instead of water molecules).


It was still December and, having at last been given a timeframe for treatment, we planned a small holiday to Queensland in the intervening time. LT and I figured that if things were going to suck, we should build up some happy times to draw on. Plus, it beat the idea of sitting in front of the idiot box sucking cheap wine for five weeks.

2017, Sat 5 Dec 2009

Lauren had Christmas morning early today :-) She's drinking wine and playing with her shiny new iPod nano right now. Looks like a hit (thank goodness, as I keep getting technology sort of gifts instead of romantic type rubbish and I fear my luck will soon run out). She's singing like a retard, oh god.

Schedule for tomorrow: up at 0400; leave at 0445; away on the plane at 0600. Lose an hour switching to non-daylight saving and arrive, grumpy and tired on the Sunshine Coast at 1105. Whee! Can't wait to see the family :-D