Radiant

Today was the beginning of the radiation. I had already gone to the hospital for the making of my body cast and mask. Which in theory sounded like I was going to participate in an exciting experimental art project, or prehaps a day at a three year old kinder. The result was more bondage meets Iraqi prisoner Abu Ghraib style. The body cast was created using foam that solidified around my body as I lay very still on what was like a tanning bed. Then the all exciting mask, this was a hardened piece of plastic that was moulded to my face and then fastened to the edges of the sun bed. The mask grewer tighter and tighter and I was armed with some bells in my left hand in order to ring loudly if I needed the attention of the radiation therapists due to the fact the mask made it near to impossible to verbally communicate. A small inscision was made for the appropriate breathing procedure to occur. The sensation of the mask was likened to the feeling I could imagine from falling hundreds of feet out of a plane and the skin been drawn upwards towards the plane as you plummet by gravity to the earths surface. My breasts were then strapped to my arms with tape to try and remove as much breast tissue from the central zone of my chest, in which the radiation beam was to be shot. Finally a small tattoo was performed on the centre of my chest with blue ink in order for the lazers to be able to be lined up with ultimate precision everyday with my body. They therapists then scooted around my body armed with cameras in order to get all of the angles for proper replications to be performed during the daily radiation sessions.........

17 radiation sessions to be precise......


This is the pinnacle of my career as a medical chimp, a cancer vessel being explored, probed, dissected, objectified and violated.....all with a cluster of bright colored christmas bells tucked neatly into my left hand

So the first session began, the mask was placed over my head, it felt suffocatingly tight. The tattoo was lined up with the lasers. The bells were placed into my left hand and the therapists all left the room, scampered behind walls of glass and possibly steel so that they would not get a minuscule amount of secondary radiation that was being directly pointed, aimed and fired into my chest area exploding cancer cells but also radiating my lungs, heart, skin and bone marrow.

A few tears dropped from my tightly shut eyelids and meandered down my cheeks and collected in my ears.

When the therapist removed my mask after thirty minutes of tests and two short doses of radiation she saw the tears and remarked how the mask must of been so tight around my eyes that it had made them water. I agreed.

Why isn't the fact that I had just been undressed, strapped, pulled, suffocated and then radiated from back to front been enough of a justification for a few tears to fall to mark the initiation of ones process in the radiation mill.

I left after a visit to the nurse who recommended sorbolene cream in case or when my skin begins to look dry and red and the need for a few blood tests. My arms still with the memory of being so very battered and bruised instinctively recoiled towards my chest. "you don't like needles?" he asked. I looked at him incredulously "does anyone like needles after chemo?"


In my new found obsession for distraction my boy and I went and saw a documentary on William Burroughs. Burroughs was a beat generation member, writer, painter, social critique and from the documentary a lover of cat's, opiates and hand guns. Burroughs believed artists were the real architects of change. He also so adversity and trauma as leading to products of creativity and strength and once accidentally shot his lover and mother of his child, to which he believed gave him great inspiration for his writing. Maybe it is true, sometimes we need great tragedy, trauma and to truly wriggle around in the darkness to create beautiful and provocative art as well as strength of character. I Can't wait to create a performance art piece based on radiation process......genius!

reaching radiation

I have finished chemotherapy. That sentence is something I had been wishing and fantasising about saying since its initiation three months ago. I had been told by my oncologist that I would possibly have another five chemo sessions to go before a possible course of radiation therapy. With this daunting outlook I headed to Peter Mac cancer hospital to meet with the radiation therapist. A female doctor in her late thirties advised me that I had two options. I was to either finish a course of six chemotherapies or complete 3 and a half weeks of radiation therapy. The choice seemed to have two players, both were equally as villainous and depraved and both were staring at me with beguiling smiles beckoning me to their lair. She explained the short and long term consequences of radiation therapy, this included short term burning of the area been radiated, fatigue and a possible sore throat. The long term effects were a little more sinister and included secondary cancer in the form of breast cancer and or the possibility of thyroid dysfunction. Long term skin discoloration and nerve damage was also a possibility. armed with this information and after having a thorough discussion with the oncologist in the chemo lab at St Vincents I decided that the toxicity of the radiation was slightly less then undertaking six more chemotherapy sessions. The continual chemo would invariably lead to the exponential rate of being sicker and weaker and possibly create permanent lung damage from one of the chemicals in the chemotherapy concoction. The lesser of two evils? Decisions where both the outcomes are not optimal or even palatable is so very difficult.

I start radiation in a fortnight,

till then the food tastes sweeter. My arms don't ache. My chest doesn't heave. No tears haven't fallen from the captivity of my eyelids. My hot flushes and thus menopause will slowly wear off. Life feels lighter, more manageable and has the alluring sense of nearing the end of this chapter.