Blog:  Radiation treatment series:  April 28, 2016

Tomorrow, Friday marks the first week, 5 treatment sessions of radiation which will eventually add up to a total of 45 sessions, Monday through Friday.  My last session is scheduled for June 24.
  

I lie down on the CT machine slab placing my feet in a mold, custom-made just for me so my body and feet are in the same position every time.  I have a pencil-mark-like dot tattooed just below my navel and one on each side of my body the same level as the one on my navel.  This helps insure I am in the same position every time and helps the scanner orient to me. 

-o-o-o-

When I had my pacemaker put in, everything happened so fast.  I mentally processed events in terms of a medical procedure just like when I had my appendectomy.  It was just something that had to be done.  Now, when I go to have my pacemaker checked (4 times a year), I know that I would not be here without this silent embedded contraption that keeps my heart beating. Tragically, I would have missed my wedding.  I am like Darth Vader without the “darth.”

So the cat is out-of-the-bag.  I am mortal, not that I never thought otherwise, I just never thought about it.   I never accepted the death of my parents or anyone that I loved.  That are just not there.  When kids or whomever goes to school or to work or elsewhere, they are just not there.  The departed have not been there for a while.  One can choose to think they are somehow somewhere and we will all meet again.  For a reckoning perhaps?  One can choose to think they are nothing more now than just dust or ashes.  If either of these fancies improve one’s life or gives meaning to it, then so be it.  For myself, I will not even say I do not know because this raises the trap of what it means to know or not know.   For myself I know they are alive because I am alive, at least they will be alive for so long as I live.

-o-o-o-

To be continued with more about the radiation procedure.