Women in Comfortable Shoes

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05/15/2004: "Radioactive Cobalt Blues"

You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best you have to give. - Eleanor Roosevelt

Anyone seen my courage? I must have misplaced it.

Next week, I’m going to have my head examined. Again. This time in preparation for radiation treatment on my pituitary tumor. Seems my tumor has grown 1 mm since January.

While that's not much in terms of absolute measurements, it's quite a lot when measuring the space available in my head and it's enough to indicate that this thing is unstoppable by surgical means. I could have another surgery, but chances are near 100 percent that it would come back again.

So, it’s time to bring out the big guns. I’m going to get zapped by a Gamma Knife – blasted by 201 beams of vibrant gamma waves produced by radioactive cobalt. Each beam itself is relatively harmless (allegedly), but where they intersect, they are like RAID on cockroaches.

I don't know why there are 201 beams, instead of 199 or 200. But to pass the time while I'm in the zapping chamber, I think I'll make up a song. How about 201 Radioactive Beams in my Head, sung to the tune of 100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.

When I first learned in January that that my little lagniappe had returned, I was really upset. But I'm OK with everything now. We'll get through this as best we can and go on with our lives, just like Eleanor said. What else is there to do?

But you know, there are advantages to being radioactive:
* I won't need a nightlight when I need to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
* We won't need coals or propane to grill dinner. Just slap a steak on my noggin and it's instant medium rare. You don't get those appetizing marks left by the grill grate, but I can pull the meat through my teeth to simulate them, if you want.
* I won't get lost on a foggy morning.
* We won't need the heater anymore. Mel and the animals can snuggle and we'll all be toasty warm and we'll save beaucoup bucks on the gas bill.