BEAM ON: Getting Radiated

Three weeks into the radiation, my malignant prostate cells are taking a serious beating. So I’m told. The good healthy cells are also hurting, but they’re able to revitalize themselves. The bad guys, with the persistent radiation punishment, cannot. Therein lies the beauty of radiotherapy.

Since I don’t feel anything awful from the cancer or the treatment, it’s nice to know something is happening. The only thing that really hurts is how much gas I’m burning to Bethesda Health City and back every day.

Oh, there’s been fatigue here and there. But it sleeps off. And some urinary burn, which, as a veteran with chronic prostatitis, is hardly worth mentioning. (I’m Catheter Experienced.) Oddly, some of my old symptoms of prostatitis, like the persistently annoying drip that spotted my khakis, has gone away.

A Procession of Cancer
Monday through Friday at 4 p.m., I get radiated. We have a TV in the Waiting Room and watch Dr. Phil. I’m the second to the last guy of the day who proceeds to the Radiation Room every fifteen minutes. Those I’ve met are older than me by a generation – most are in for prostate cancer, others throat cancer.

Trust me on this one, if you smoke STOP TODAY. Larry, in his 70s, is a lifer-smoker now undergoing radiation twice daily and chemo for his throat cancer; his face is burnt raw and his throat is filled with blistering sores from the radiation, so he can’t eat. He lives on a feeding tube. “This is hell,” he tells me.

The guy who gets radiated before me, Michael, is a 70-year-old African-American who has lost two brothers and his dad to prostate cancer, and a third brother to lung cancer. He didn’t want the surgery because “if I can’t have sex anymore, what’s the point.”

He has a girlfriend. Once when she came over to his house, dirty dishes were piled up in the sink—very uncharacteristic of him. When she asked how’s he doing, he pointed to the sink and said, What’s it look like? “I use to be compulsive about things like dishes– now I don’t give a shit. The cancer’s helped me relax.”

Getting zapped
When my turn comes, I clutch the back of my hospital robe and walk to the Radiation Room. In the center is my salvation. The hulking Trilogy Machine. Imagine a sand crab the size of a Hummer with three giant claws. I lay on a table in the mouth of the crab, as a couple 20-something female techs slide my robe up and put a little white cloth over my naked loins. They shift me on the table until green laser lights line up with three permanent tattoos burned around my pubic hairs. Flat on my back, the girls lean in and stare. They measure. They’re ridiculously cute.

For the first days, I felt … well, surprisingly modest. Then I got use to it and I’ve been flopping around and hanging out ever since. Whatever. Let's get on with it....

The girls finally leave the room and the three giant claws start roaming around my body, scanning for images ... locking on to the gold markers inserted into my prostate .... hovering and re-aligning .... before a buzzing sound starts up and an electronic display box on the wall flashes…..

…..BEAM ON. In bright red lights! The big claw is radiating me!

I hold my breath every time. Don’t want to move my prostate with a gulp of air. The girls assure me I can breath, but why take a chance. I can hold my breath for 10 to 15 seconds – the duration of the maximum BEAM ON.

I get eight radiation blasts per session. Totaling maybe a minute and a half.

As of this Friday, those rebellious malignant cells have been buffeted by 22 minutes of high-dose radiation and they’re feeling it now….they’re hurtin’ bad ….trying to spread but….that old metastsizing energy ain’t there no more….their DNA is crippling..... weakening....bastard cells are starting to die.....

To burn them beyond repair, just 45 minutes of radiation to go. About six weeks.