Radiation Homestretch

At this point, Sheila is most of the way through the final homestretch in her radiation treatment and she's quite excited... and fatigued... and burned... but mostly experiencing subdued excitement punctuated by occasional outbursts of excitement!

So, to quickly update, at this point she's experiencing some relatively minor pain in the tissue of her right breast. The burned skin and itching has been mostly soothed through the use of various lotions (including prescription). On the positive side, the Radiation Oncologist was happy to see in today's visit that Sheila is not showing any signs of blistering and there are only tiny signs of some peeling. So that is good news. Sheila already went through some peeling when radiation treatment first started. She is now quite red at this point though. Well... some areas are a deep, bright red while other areas are showing what appears to be a deep tan. 

Sheila needs to endure only two more radiation treatments... tomorrow and Friday. It's an exciting time for her. I can see her excitement suddenly emerge at times but it is always very short lived because of her fatigue. I am very familiar with oppressing fatigue that saps the energy necessary for anything, even excitement, and Sheila seems to be showing this level of fatigue now. Actually... we're quite the pair at this point... we're both exhausted due to our own health issues and this grueling cancer treatment schedule. To be honest, we're both looking forward to putting this last week of radiation behind us for many reasons. 

I'll get into a more detailed explanation about the next phase of treatment another time. For now, I'll just say we won't begin this decade-long phase until early to mid-December when we head back to the Oncologist.

Only two more days left in this homestretch!

I'm including a few photos here that Lukey shot this past weekend (notice his signature on each of these photos). The grandkids spent the weekend with us and we all had a great time. Whenever I hand Lukey one of my cameras, I need to remind him of which buttons do what... shutter release, focus button, playback/review button... and the best way to compose a photo... and he still needs to stretch out those tiny fingers to reach each of the buttons but he always captures a few good photos while holding up the camera and then he's done with photography for the day. 


Here is some silliness directed toward Lukey as he shot a few photos of Gee and Kenzie...