Happy Birthday, David!

7490 Brompton, Apt. 442
Houston, TX 77025
713-660-7826
donshnell@sbcglobal.net

The picture on the blog tonight is two of the guys on my support team. Of course, Don, on the left and Bob Clark on the right. Bob and his wife, Diana, were down here a couple of weeks ago visiting. Bob and I went to school together in the 8th grade in Japan. He and Diana lived in Alaska and we started emailing back and forth about 10 years ago. Then they retired and moved to Texas, about 4 hours from where we live in Hobart. They came to visit us and fell in love with a house down the street from us, bought it and moved to Hobart! How cool is that? We love having them nearby; they are like family to us. They travel about like Don and I do and we’re nearly always going in different directions, but we dream of traveling together one day. It was sure great to have them visit us here.

Today we went for the second radiation. We go into a big waiting room where I leave Don to wait for me. I go into another area and change into a hospital gown and leave my clothes in a locker and go into a smaller waiting room and wait for them to call me back to the machine. The room that houses the machine is very big and spacious. The machine is huge, but I climb up onto a little table that is about the size of an examination table in a doctor’s office. The mold they made of me last Monday is on the table and I fit myself into it. There is a towel on the table so if they need to move me over a tad they just pull the towel with me on it. My right arm has to be in a position where my hand is up about at my ear and my elbow is about level with my shoulder. They tape it into that position to be sure none of the skin on my arm gets radiated. I lay still and they move the machine all around to send the radiation beams at me from different angles. I think I’m in the room with the machine about 30 minutes.

Waiting to go in there is when it is interesting. Today it was way interesting with ladies who were sharing their histories and experiences with treatment. It’ll be interesting to see who is in there every day. I have the 4:00 slot for all this week and a couple of days next week and then I get to go to the 7:30 a.m. slot. We asked for early appointments so we could get the radiation done and get on with our days. This is certainly a new experience for me; I feel like I’m in outer space or something when I’m in that room with the machine.

We saw the radiology oncologist today and he was checking to be sure all is in order. He did tell me that I shouldn’t expect to have any side effects for the first 2 to 3 weeks, other than the skin being red. It’s a little pink now, but that’s all.

God is taking care of us and we thank Him for His graciousness. We thank Him for you who care, too. Our nephew, David, had a birthday today, and we thank God for him, too!