That darn hair: Thoughts during a radiation treatment
That darn hair! Or can I really call it hair? It isn’t my hair, even though it on my head and tickling my ear. Properly speaking, it is a plastic, but very realistic, strand of imitation hair – wig hair. This is the wig that I have been wearing for five months, since my real hair came out due to chemotherapy. Now this strand of wig hair is tickling my ear, and I can’t move. This is the second time today I have had a medical procedure requiring me to lie perfectly still. This time I am undergoing radiation therapy. I have seen the diagram of how the radiation beams are carefully aimed to target the tumor bed and avoid my heart and sternum (where the bone marrow makes red blood cells). So I can’t raise my arm to remove the offending hair from my ear. I try not to think about it; the treatment lasts just a couple of minutes – I can stand a tickle that long, I think.
This is my 15th treatment and the technicians no longer give me the instructions, but I know them well. “Lie still, don’t move, and breathe normally.” I’m glad they don’t give me these instructions each time. For some reason the instruction “breathe normally” has the opposite of the intended effect. Just think about it – breathing normally is what we do without thinking about it. After being told to “breathe normally,” I find myself breathing shallowly, and then wanting to take deep gasping breaths. Best not to draw attention to breathing!
This whole thing with the hair in my ear is driving me crazy. I want to just kick my legs in the air and scream! It is a true indicator of just how weary I am of medical appointments and medical procedures.
