Radiotherapy

Radiotherapy is hard. It's an endless cycle of treatment after treatment and journey after journey.

It's hard to accept that that is my life now. Or at least for the time being. An hour and a half to the hospital, half an hour's treatment, an hour and a half home again, then sleep. I sleep so much it's hard to believe. I have no energy to do anything else. Even moving from one room to another is an effort.

But the hospital itself… that's strange. It's corridors, and happy music, and lights off then on again, positioning on the table, treatment that makes blue lights dance behind my eyes, and clacking heels down the corridor, and laughter with the radiographers, frowns and groans in the changing room. Smiles in the waiting room as everyone has a kind of camaraderie, we're all in this together, all us sick people being cured. Grimaces as we are alone, each of us unwilling to wish this on any one else. Cause yeah, it's a painless treatment, and it doesn't take long, but it's later, it's life outside the hospital that stops. You can deal with the treatment, spending time at the hospital, because you have to. When you are home, when life is your own again, your energy is gone, your eyes are tired, your stomach, your throat hurt, but that is nothing compared to the nausea and the perplexing sleep depravation - eight hours a night is not enough, I need at least 12.

We can deal with the hospital. But on the outside, there is nothing, we are empty shells.

And I'll be honest; if I have to be a shell, I'd rather be one on the beach!