9th January 2014……One week of radiotherapy down

'You cannot choose how you die but you can choose how you live, so live life with no regrets.'

I heard that from a television show today.  

Everyday I am lying on a hard metal bed with a huge machine above my head.  I am naked from the waste up and I have two people both men and women drawing dots all over my chest whilst I lie there vulnerable, lonely and frightened.  My life is once again in someone else's hands.

I was staring at the ceiling today blocking out the various numbers that the radiographers are shouting to each other and Florence and the Machine played on the radio.

'And i'm damned if I do and i'm damned if I don't,

So here's to drinks in the dark at the end of my road,

And i'm ready to suffer and i'm ready to hope,

It's a shot in the dark and right at my throat

Cause looking for heaven, found the devil in me

Looking for heaven found the devil in me

Well what the hell i'm gonna let it happen to me

Shake it out, shake it out

Shake it out shake it out

And it's hard to dance with the devil on your back 

So shake him off'

That verse stuck in my head.  I heard this song go round and round in my head.  Do not ask me why the words struck a chord they just did.  I guess I am dancing with the devil on my back.  Maybe I was just reading into something.  Who knows, but music at the right time or a certain place can be very nostalgic and very surreal.  In that moment I got caught up with words and my emotion at that exact time. 

Radiotherapy is actually very easy.  I go into hospital every day, undress and lie flat on my back.  The machine does its job and then I leave.  There are no side effects, no drugs, just radiation which is slowly sunburning my breast.  These machines are my god and I have to trust them with my life.

I have three more weeks of radiotherapy.  I go home every night and undress for a shower and I look in the mirror.  I  look like a dot to dot puzzle.  I smile then I nod to myself and carry on.  There are no words with this treatment.  This is the weirdest treatment as you literally cannot feel the effects.  Sometimes I wish I could just so I knew something good was happening.  Why is it I need to feel pain to think something is working?

Tomorrow when I go in and see them they will all laugh.  I had a spray tan but I wore a crop top.  I wasn't going to say anything to them but I have realised that a massive white patch across my chest is a giveaway!  Anything to make me feel better though cannot be a bad thing?  I may get told off.  I will let you know.

I do feel sad when I go to the hospital everyday and I cannot put my finger on why.  Maybe it is the fear that one day I may have to do this all again.  Maybe because I look around at all the people having treatment and it scares me to think how many people are actually ill.  Everyone has a story.  I get a lot of looks being young.  The average age at the hospital for radiotherapy at the moment is 60.  I can tell they are wondering what my story is.  I guess a part of me is wondering what there story is.

My biggest fear is what happens when it is all over?  Am I really going to be able to just get back on the train of life and carry on.  I do hope so but as the end is becoming increasingly near I am starting to panic.  At the beginning I was ok.  I was positive and I had seven months of getting better to focus on.  

I am just not sure, at the moment how I will ever really switch off from all this.  Will I ever really be able to forget the last year of my life?  Do I even want too?

Maybe that is why those words from that television show made me think.  I cannot choose how I die, cancer has proved that.  It was a warning.  So I guess I choose life.  There is really is no other answer.

xx