Nothing Like Barium in the morning!

(on a sidenote, I am not sure why the frame of the videos i'm embedding from youtube are being cut off on here...you're not missing much with the other inch of screen in the frame really, but i suppose if you wanted you could click the video screen and it'll just take you the that video on youtube's site. If anyone wants to help me out on this one, i'm much obliged)

The Girl with the Golden Cervix

"We're just going to implant a couple seeds, Fiducial Markers actually, around the tumor. They will serve as a radiological landmark to define the target legions position with millimeter precision, allowing the Cyberknife to treat the area with greater accuracy."
Seemed simple enough, no? Last week I went in to the Cyberknife surgery center to begin this process. Fun times, guys. Fuuuunnn times. I found that for as much as I've gone through. And for as much as I tolerate, they never cease to amaze me by the crazy sci-fi things they think up. Inserting a 12 inch needle into my butt cheek all the way to the front near the cervix and then just dropping off a little golden seed using the assistance of a ct scanner to see the needle inserting in real-time?? NUTS i tell ya!

Now, I realize that I've learned to go with the flow so much that I must've assumed this little process was gonna be a breeze. As people in the waiting room outside the CT Scanner can probably attest now...I assumed wrong.
I can't, for the life of me understand why, when choosing to do this to a person, do they not automatically just knock them out? I'm sure there must be some blatant obvious reason that I'm overlooking purely because it was ME having a needle shoved in my ass. But truly, looking at it now the entire process seems so barbaric given the highly advanced and futuristic thing that I will be having done to me with this CyberKnife.
Its times like these, that I do allow myself to look at who I am from a distance and give an approving nod. I actually am one pretty intensely tough chic. Normally, I cringe if I hear someone talk AT or TO me about how "strong and stoic" I am. HA! I'd neeeevver say that about my person. But then something like needle through the ass happens and I get to take the time to look objectively and go "Hot Damn I am kind of a badass."

So, what the hell are they doing to me with this Cyberknife? The best I can explain is they will be using this highly focused pin-pointed extremely precise radiation machine to blast that damned tumor into oblivion as best they can. And in order to do that, the Cyberknife uses those gold markers to track. Now that I've had the markers placed, and the follow up CT Scan done, I have been given the go-ahead and the physicists or whoever are hopefully busily plotting out my treatment plan. Its anywhere from 1-5 treatments total. Each treatment being around 1 hour. I hope to know this week what my schedule will be for the treatments.

That's pretty much the cut and dry basics. And all I have time to write up at this moment. Next blog I want to divulge my back and forth relationship with a thing called "Hope" and how this cyberknife has been injecting it back in my daily life, despite all my reluctance.