September 9, 2007

Treatment Begins

Dear Family & Friends,

Evan started his radiation treatment on Thursday. We thought it would start on Wednesday, but it turned out that they needed to double check the alignment points for the radiation beams and make sure everything lined up the way they wanted it to. So they spent his Wednesday appointment doing that.

He had his first official treatment on Thursday and the second one on Friday. He hasn’t felt any side-effects yet, which has been a relief, but they told us he might not feel any significant changes until later in the second week.

As for the chemotherapy, he starts that on Monday. Again, we thought he would start chemotherapy on the same day as the radiation, but our insurance company requires that we order the drug through a specialty pharmacy that only delivers through the mail. Anyway, by the time we jumped through all their hoops and waited for them to process the order, Monday was the earliest delivery date. We’re learning that nothing is ever as simple and straight-forward as you think it will be.

So this coming week will be the first full week of both radiation and chemotherapy. For the next 6 weeks he’ll have radiation 5 days a week (Monday thru Friday), and take the chemo every day (7 days a week). It certainly won’t be fun, but they’ve given him lots of other medications to counter the potential side-effects so hopefully that will keep them to a minimum. We’re just crossing our fingers and hoping that the next six weeks go by really fast.

The most interesting thing about this past week has been sitting in the waiting room with all the other patients waiting for their radiation treatments. It’s a humbling experience to realize how many other people are going through the same thing we are. We’ve seen teenagers, elderly people, men and women of all ages and walks of life. They’re all there with little or no hair, in various stages of health, and various stages of life. I sit and wonder what each of their stories might be. Somehow it’s comforting to see them - to know that we aren’t alone, to know that we haven’t been singled out for this ordeal, to know that this happens to hundreds of people just like us everyday.

In the back, near the treatment rooms, they have a big brass bell attached to the wall. On your last day of radiation you get to ring that bell. Every day that we’ve been there, I’ve heard at least one person ring the bell. I’ve quickly grown to love the sound of that bell. It tells me that somebody else made it through this and we will too.

Thanks for all your prayers – we need every one of them!

All my love,
Margot