![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
River: Final (treatment) Friday
This morning I had my final radiation treatment. There's a gong in the waiting room, and I hit it on the way out. Very satisfying. 70 grays spread over 28 zaps, weekdays for five weeks and 3 days.
Radiation dosage is measured in grays, which have the units of energy absorbed per unit mass; one gray is one joule per kilogram. I don't have any kind of informtation about how much my prostate weighed at the beginning of this treatment; possibly around 70g; that works out to about 4.9 joules, spread out over five weeks. According to Wikipedia, one joule is approximately the kinetic energy of a 56g tennis ball moving at 6m/s (22km/h). So one of those every week.
I'm still trying to figure out what would make an appropriate way to mark the transition. By the terminology of these days I've been a survivor since my diagnosis. And I'm still being treated with a testosterone blocker -- I have another year and a half or so of that to go. And it'll be maybe another year after that until I know whether the combination actually got all the cancer. So who, or what, am I now?
An impatient, maybe?
no subject
As for what to do to celebrate the transition? Do something fun & silly is my advice.