Day 1 of WBR

Day 1 of Whole Brain Radiation
This morning when I woke up, my head started to hurt. I can feel the tumors pounding through my brain. Not  like a headache, but a sense of dizziness and a sensation of little shots of achiness drumming through my head. My throat felt super dry too.  Not only that, my back started to ache also, like a jolt of pain would rippled through my back here and there periodically.  All this and I haven't even started the WBR yet. Scared. Worried. Definitely, all of these symptoms, makes me nervous of what lays ahead.

It's odd that a week ago, I felt great and now, the enormity of these brain tumors, of my cancer, it's hitting me hard. It's scary and sad to swallow all this in. Everything is happening too fast. Like a whirlwind, my life flashes before me.  Its unnerving to know that my mortality is starring right at me, knocking, scribbling my name.  Sigh, this disease really sucks.
And so, anticipating fatigue after my 1st WBR treatment later this afternoon, I kicked off my day this with a list of things to complete. I logged on to get some work done and also took care of taxes, mail and rescheduling a class for my son. I even picked up my prescription of memantine and took it before treatment. With my hubby taking care of the kids, I drove myself to Stanford.

Today's treatment, since it was my first go, took a little longer than the 5-10 minutes.  With set up and fitting  of my mask to keep my head still and the machine needing to take more images to align my head, all in all, the  entire treatment, took 20 minutes. I was pleasantly surprised how quick, simple and easy it was. I didn't have change clothes or "gown up" with hospital clothes or even had to take any meds, like a steriod. Whew. 1 down and 14 more to go. Here's to kicking the brain tumors. Well wishes and hopes, prayers that this WBR will knock all the tumors out for good. Lots of Love.