Saturday - September 06, 2008

bye bye burning

 ... the end of radiation

Good bye Eddie and Jackie and Maria and Suzie and Mike and Lisa and all the rest of the kind hearted professionals with whom I shared my mornings for the past six and a half weeks.  Thanks for infusing the drudgery with smiles and laughter.

Good bye burning flesh.

Good bye to the tubes of gooey white cream (I have to admit, you smelled kinda nice) and jars of ointment that tried, usually in vain, to soothe the firey, itching skin that never peeked at the sun from a swimming suit or felt the cool water in a pool after July 21st.

Good bye short summer.  I enjoyed your June and most of your July ever so much.  Sorry I had to leave early.  I promise next year I will relish your sweet sunshine and swimming twice as much as ever, albeit heavily armed with zinc.

Good bye burning flesh.

Good bye secret code that raises the gate to the private parking area at the hospital, fulfilling my fantasy that I was going to work in the morning, all proud and industrious - not checking in as a patient, one of the defective, pitiful ones.

Good bye giant humming machine with your crazy beams and lasers and that scary face at the end of your wide arm.  I can't say I'll miss lying as still as a breath while you were swinging around and honing in on me, your target.   I will miss the music that pretended to occlude your weird buzzes, whirs, hums and whistles.

Good bye burning flesh.

Good bye hundred invisible mosquitos stinging my nipple toward the end of treatment.  Most of you have already left, and the rest will be gone by next week.  Good riddance.  

Good bye embarassing braless "show through".  Oh, I know it'll be a while before I'm ready for Victoria's squishies and wires, but I'll work way up through the stretchies until eventually the queen of underthings will mask my dimpled, twisted twin nicely enough that a sweater won't tell my secret.

Good bye burning flesh.

Hello Tamoxifen.  Be nice.  We're gonna be together for a long, long time.