River: Final (treatment) Friday

[mdlbear]

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?

Comments

[mdlbear]

Thanks! Too soon to tell for sure, but at least I have over a year before I have to worry about it again.