A little bit of this and that...

I just got back from treatment #11 a little bit ago so I thought now would be a good time to fill you all in on how things have been going so far. Besides being pink and some occasional acid reflux, I'm fairing pretty well. My radiology oncologist, whom I meet with once a week, said I was a bit pinker than he'd like and he might stop using this gold material that increases the dosage at my skin but we'll see what he says when I see him this week. The acid reflux was a potential side effect because my esophagus is hit by the radiation beams at certain angles but it's not too bad.

And if you hadn't noticed in the previous post with pictures of me with my nieces and nephews, my hair is coming back. And the great news is it is about the same color as far as I can tell and it's NOT curly. I had heard a lot of stories where people's hair came back dark black or a different color altogether and really, really curly. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with that so this straight brown hair is awesome news. And it's growing quite fast which I'm even more excited about. Below is a picture with one month's growth. 

When I was at my treatment on Friday, I took a few pictures for you all to see what it looks like in there.

This is the gold material I was referring to above. For two of the three locations of the arm that shoots the beam, this is draped over me.

This is the form that they made for me that I lay in every treatment to keep me in the same position. It's for my head and arms over my head.

And here is the whole setup. I lay on that table and the arm above first moves slightly to the right from this angle for one location, the clavicle I think where they are hitting the lymphnodes in that areas. Then it goes even further to to the right and does a treatment from the side. Finally, it moves to the left and possibly below the table, although I'm not 100% sure of the location because head is turned the other way. Then we're done. 

Overall, the beam is only on for 40 Mississippi's...I counted them during treatment #5. So it isn't really that long. It's just the arranging that takes some time.

I've still got my count down chain going and it's getting significantly shorter. Soon I'll have to switch the hooks it's hanging from! You might also notice a color change since last time. I finally got out the green kitchen paint and painted our island to match the rest of the kitchen.

This prompted us to do a few other projects we've been meaning to get to. Two done, one almost done, one supplies bought for, and one a contract signed for. The finished ones are all you get to see for now though.

1. I did finally finish my valences in our living room/kitchen.

2. We, as in Mark, moved our ceiling fan so it's more over the bed than in the center of the room where it does us no good in the middle of the summer.

Mark and his hole bit he got for Christmas..so excited to use it!

Drilling the new hole

Perfect circle

The finished product...before he covered the old hole.

3. I painted our master bath over the last 3 or 4 days. This prompted us to get new light fixtures and hardware. We're also looking for new faucets but I might try spray painting them first because I've read quite a few blogs about the idea. What do I have to loose? If it doesn't work, I will just buy the, as originally planned. I still need to finish cleaning up the mess and put everything back together.

4. We finally found outdoor garden lights we like and that were reasonably priced. Now we just need to figure out where we want them in the backyard. I'm sure Mark will want to install them soon so hopefully it won't be long. He mentioned it yesterday but I was busy working in the bathroom.

5.  According to AZcentral.com, greater Phoenix averages 211 clear days and 85 partly cloudy days each year (not sure what happened to the other 69 days of the year). With numbers like that it's no wonder there are so many houses with solar panels. After some research, we've decided it would be throwing away money not to do it too. Unfortunately we don't have enough south facing roof for enough panels to offset our entire power bill but it will almost cut it in half. We're having our roof inspection on Thursday but aren't expecting the panels to be installed until May. Luckily, we don't really have to do much else but give them a check so this one is easy.