Getting Zapped for a Living

6.5 weeks later, and I've finally finished radiotherapy. 33 sessions, approximately an hour and a half of actual treatment, and it's all finished. My own preconceptions of radiotherapy were incredibly wrong, and before diagnosis I had assumed radiotherapy was chemotherapy, and I never really thought beyond that. I was very wrong, and didn't know what to expect. So, what is it actually like going through radiotherapy?

To begin with, it's very overwhelming. I distinctly remember sitting at the kitchen table with my nan crying over my chicken tikka masala because I was so scared, the prospect of losing my hair was hanging over me, and I was incredibly nervous at what felt like an eternity ahead of me. I would be dedicating 5 days a week to being treated, it was basically my new job to actually have treatment and there was nothing I could do about it. Very similar to my first job: unwanted, tiring, and not the most glamorous thing. This all began to change, however, when I met my radiographers; the people who I would create a friendship with over the next few weeks, and my relationship with them flipped my perception of radiotherapy the full 180 degrees.

Before you actually begin radiotherapy, you go through what is called 'treatment planning': a process that includes making your radiotherapy mask along with having a CT scan to help the computers later on. The mask begins as a flat plastic mesh, and is heated in hot water to make it more maleable before it is placed over your face and moulded personally to you. Fun fact, they actually offer this type of process in a spa as a treatment, because the feeling of a warm plastic over your face is actually incredibly soothing, so if you want to know what it's like to have the mask minus the whole cancer thing, have a look at a spa near you. The CT scan is pretty self explanatory, your radiographers will take one CT scan a week when you are in treatment and mould them all together to create an image of the section being treated, to pinpoint what specific areas of the brain (or indeed other part of the body being treated) we're going to lob some beams at. These CT scans play an important role in allowing the computers to always hit the tumour cells with amazing accuracy, so make sure you lie still. Following your planning, you'll be given a specific appointment time for when treatment will begin, and the ball is officially rolling.

Now we begin the fun part. Actual treatment. Generally speaking, there are 2 waiting rooms, the first where you'll be greeted by some genuinely lovely receptionists, who book in your appointment to let your radiographers know you've arrived, and the second is where you wait outside your designated machine, referred to as 'LINAC' (an abbreviation of a linear particle accelerator), but usually it's referred to by what section the machine lies in. I bounced between two sections, so was either on LINAC D or LINAC F. It sounds complicated, but it literally translates as 'You're on machine 3 today, Beckie,' or 'You can make your way to machine 4,'. The first radiographer you meet will sit you down and go over your treatment plan with you, double checking your ID (name, DOB, and address) to ensure the right paperwork is in hand, as well as asking for your understanding about how many treatment sessions you'll be having and what exactly it is that we're treating. In my case, I was having 33 sessions to treat a brain tumour, simple and straight to the point. The good part about this is your radiographers are there to answer any questions you have, whether it's about side effects or any worries you have, and they're there 5 days a week to help you out. Once you're satisfied, you make your way through to the treatment room. It isn't anything fancy, if anything the machine looks like a gigantic cake mixer and there's a simple plastic bed to lie on with a headrest. I looked forward to going in to choose which music I wanted to listen to while I was being treated, and it was a concoction of Shakey Graves and Hozier, which my radiographers grew to love. Once again, your ID is checked, and your fancy mask is placed over your head and clipped into the bed, ensuring you are in the same position every time and your head is as still as possible. You hear your radiographers talking to each other, discussing your positioning and they move you around to ensure you are both comfortable and in the right place, I barely understood what any of it meant, but what I did gather was that my positioning was 'Post, and left', meaning I was high up, and we were treating the left side of my head, and once I was in the right position the radiographers leave for a few minutes. Overall, actual treatment for me took about 3-5 minutes, I'd barely get through two songs before the team would come back in the room, tell me that everything was done, and would unclip my mask before allowing me to get back up, and that was the day finished.

Every single day of treatment ran the same, sometimes the clinic would run behind but it was always the case that you would just wait for your turn, have your turn, and go. The only thing that would change now, is the side effects. To be clear, radiotherapy makes you extremely tired, and you will end up wanting to nap all the time. The side effects take between 2-3 weeks to really kick in, so by my 14th treatment I was really starting to feel it. Not long after, my hair started to go. The dreaded moment. I pulled on my hair every single morning as I anticipated the one day it would show no resistance and fall out, and the morning it did I dreaded having a shower because I knew exactly what was going to happen. I'd spent the last 3 weeks watching my hair thin, and now it was finally going. A sigh of relief that it was happening, but traumatising to see it go nonetheless. It doesn't go gradually, oh no, one day you wake up and your hair follicles have packed their bags and that is it. Having to continuously pull my hair out was more an annoyance than upsetting, but talking about my hair falling out upset me greatly. It was frustrating physically, but mentally I was broken up about it. Overall, I've lost around a third of my hair, but with radiotherapy to the brain, the loss is localised, so it is just my left side and the front of my head that is affected, as I'm sure you have seen. Apart from the constant fatigue and hair loss, the only other side effects I noted were some miniscule headaches and the dreaded 'whooshing' sound that returned to my right ear (the left brain hemisphere was being treated, affecting my right ear. Simple neuropsychology). Nonetheless, I breezed through my treatment, and revelled in meeting others and hearing their stories in the waiting room. The one thing about radiotherapy is that you meet countless people, some who even had brain tumours like me, and you were in a space in which you didn't have to explain yourself. Everybody understood. There is an odd beauty in that.

For 33 days, I followed that routine. I'd begin on the Monday, recieve my appointment times on the Friday, sleep over the weekend and prepare for the next week ahead. I met friends inbetween, ate out at nice restaurants, and relaxed in the library down the road. One of the unwritten side effects of radiotherapy is boredom, but being in London meant I had alot of distractions at my fingertips, so I may as well have made the most of it. Radiotherapy really was that simple, and I was sad to say goodbye to the radiographers with whom I had made genuine connections, and thanked them with a card as I left, in exchange for taking my radiotherapy mask home as some macarbe souvenir. Just like that, the overwhelming eternity had ended, and I was driving back home to relax. It's been 5 days since I finished, and I feel normal again.

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