How to have radiotherapy:
1. Check schedule. On your first day you are given a timetable for the remaining 19 days. Appointment times vary through the day, from 0815 to 1630, each will require a separate travel and pooping strategy.
2. Check schedule again because you have forgotten it.
3. Aim to leave home having adequately pooped. This may require a normal lavatorial encounter, or it may have to be encouraged by an enema. The latter is not fun as it turns your bowel into a disaster area in ten minutes, followed by a spectacular botty explosion. Not the best way to start the day.
4. Leave home and head for the hospital. The departure time is calculated based on the required arrival time, expected traffic on the route into Newcastle (arriving at 0745 beats the commuters, arriving at 0900 doesn’t), and also on the likelihood of grabbing a parking space at the hospital (zero spaces during visiting hours).
5. Arrive at the hospital. Find parking. Check in. Head to toilet for final evacuation procedure. Wait till your name is called.
6. Go to a changing room and remove trousers. Retain T shirt and socks to maximise suave appearance.
7. Head into the treatment room and lie on the treatment table. Pull down underpants to expose alignment tattoos on thighs. Also expose dangly bits but try not to think about that. Impersonate slab of meat as staff manhandle you into the correct position.
8. Lie still while the rotating machine of wonderfulness takes a scan of your prostate area, then wait a few minutes while clever people fine tune the machine such that there is a match between the latest scan and the staging scan carried out earlier.
9. Continue to lie still. The machine gives a correctional shudder and then rotates for a couple of minutes. This is when the killer radiation is directed, hopefully, at the cancer in your prostate. During this process it would be appropriate for the machine to adopt a Dalek voice and scream “EXTERMINATE, EXTERMINATE” at high volume; but it maintains a quiet whirr as it rotates.
10. The machine stops, the staff enter the room and you pull up your underpants before they help you off the bench. Replace trousers and leave.
11. Return to car. Go home.
The exterminate part of the routine lasts about 3 minutes; the rest of this half day routine is just supplementary fluff.
I have now completed five sessions. Not enough for side effects, although I did fall asleep on the sofa this afternoon. The thought of another fifteen days of this routine is somewhat daunting; not just the hassle of repeating the daily ritual; but the knowledge that, as the radiation damage increases, the chance of unpleasant side effects is more and more likely.
“Because something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is ” sang Mr. Dylan. We will find out soon
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