Today was my radiation buddy's Last Treatment. What a good feeling. I brought in some cupcakes (carrot cake with candy corns that I used to spell "Y.E.S." - 1 letter per top) and a new tube of lengthening mascara. More follow-up visits and test loom on the horizon, so, while it ain't over, she got through another stage of her treatment. I'll miss her smile tomorrow, but I couldn't be happier that she is done and that I met her. She is another of those angels. A new friend.
That was the good stuff about radiation today. That and I'll be halfway through tomorrow when I get #15. Here's the flip side: I opened an unused locker in the dressing room to change out of my street clothes for treatment. I was taken aback by the over-powering stench of cigarette smoke. Seriously. There's some patient there, either smoking themselves or subject to enough second hand smoke that they left a stink behind. I had to switch lockers. It was Gross! And it made me so mad. I guess a kinder person might have felt sorrow for that poor person so addicted that radiation didn't curb their smoking. Instead I felt like telling this patient to stop wasting our resources. Stop using up the machines & the doctors time if you aren't serious about your health. If you're going to smoke, why bother with radiation? I know it's a bit harsh. I have no patience for smoking, it really pushes my buttons when I have to scurry past smokers outside the door of a hospital!!!! Even at Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center they are out there puffing away. It's like they are challenging the universe. Smoking in the face of cancer - why thumb your nose at it like that? It seems like borrowing trouble at best. What a waste and how many of us would have given up anything (even OREOS) if we knew that it was a cause of cancer. How can people still smoke in this world? with all that we know, how can you smoke? I just don't get it.
The rest of the day, the only smoke will be the candles in our jack-o-lanterns. We're trick-or-treating with the Cawleys over here in our neighborhood. Kids are all a twitter. It'll be fun (even better since I got that smoking rant out of my system).
1 comment:
jenn --
just think, soon it will be you that has concluded the zapping. i hope someone makes you cupcakes. how very jenn-cen-tric and kind and wonderful and YOU!
as for your warranted post about cigarette smoke, when i was starring in the role of nurse nightengale to my father and nurse ratchett to the medical community, i was in utter disbelief at how many of the technicians that dealt with his prostate and then bladder cancer treatments as well as the triple by pass heart recovery SMOKED!!
what part of "the insider" did they miss when a couple of 2-bit, red neck pecker heads from mississippi took on and, better, won the largest settlement - at that time - against a tobacco company, brown & williamson, with the help of whistle blower jeffrey wigand, that cigarette's are nothing more than a nicotine carrying device & highly addictive?
keep up your rant!
and keep counting down!
xoxoxoxox,
~ c
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