The Simulation Appointment

This afternoon I had a gruelling few hours in Oncology to plan my radiotherapy treatment.
This involved a 40 minute wait in a cramped, hot, stuffy room with lots of people coughing around me,
before being called into the radiotherapy simulation room ... where I was asked questions like
"Do you know why you're here?" and "Do you think you could be pregnant?"  ....    really???

After what seemed like hours ....
of lying perfectly still on a hard bed with my arm raised above my head,
while people drew on me with different coloured pens ...
and the bed moving up and the bed moving down
and then up again
and great machines moved around me whirring
and beams of green light shooting across me
with lights going on and lights going off
and people leaving the room and whispering behind a panel about numbers and angles
suddenly it all went quiet ...

oh yes,

joy of joys,

the mighty machine had broken down ...

just like at home when your computer freezes
everything stopped
and I was left on the hard bed with my arm above my head ....
for a long time .....
getting cold...
while they whispered some more.
Eventually they decided to try another machine.

The bed had been left so high they had to send for a set of steps to get me down ...
obviously this is a normal occurence ...
why else would a set of steps be waiting in the wings ready to spring into action?

So ...
I had to get dressed  ...
go back to the hot stuffy waiting room ...
and wait till I was called ...

to start all over again.

This time it seemed to go much better ...
and they seemed happy with the results.
Apparently I have a very good chest wall!!!
I've never been told that before!!!
Then I had to have two tattoos to mark the exact position for the beams to line up with.
Nothing fancy, just two black freckles ...

should I have asked for a dolphin or a rose
or maybe the names of my children?

I emerged two hours late clutching a list of twenty five appointments for radiotherapy
starting on the 28th July (our wedding anniversary)
stretching through until September 1st.

I came home and sobbed like I've never sobbed before.