exposed

Yesterday I had the planning and set up appointment for radiation therapy. It involved a CT scan in the position that you receive the radiation treatment and the application of permanent tattoo dots onto your skin. These dots enable the machines to line up perfectly each session. You spend a lot of time physically exposed while three people move you and your breasts around - taking measurements, drawing on you and taking photos. Everything is recorded in detail so the delivery of radiation is perfectly placed - quickly and efficiently. I'm so grateful for their thoroughness as I want every opportunity that I can get to make sure this cancer doesn't come back.

The radiation therapists were lovely. They were kind, reassuring and very professional. Despite this care, I have been left with a feeling of vulnerability and exposure that goes way beyond skin deep. I've been thinking about why I feel this way. With a diagnosis of any kind you feel that the power to have control in your life is taken away. Suddenly you are being swept along into surgery and treatments, results and consultations, medical data and statistics. It overwhelms you emotionally, mentally and physically. I'm also a pretty private person and up until recently only a very few, select people have been lucky enough to see my breasts. Now so many people have seen (and examined) my breasts that I have lost count!

It got me thinking about a summer I spent as a teenager at Muriwai Beach. It was all fun and games until I was picked up and dumped by a wave. As I dazedly came up out of the wave, I belatedly realised that the turbulence had caused my bikini to rearrange itself and I was... ahem... exposed to an appreciative audience of surfers waiting for a wave! Ooops! 

Beautiful Muriwai Beach 

Those waves look deceptively calm from a distance.

So whilst wanting to engage fully in every aspect of treatment that gives me a better chance long term, it is much like my teenage experience of being unexpectedly dumped on Muriwai Beach... I am feeling shaken, vulnerable and exposed.

This sign was not around when I was a teenager.

That is me being thrown around by the wave. 

And to those lucky surfers I just want to say, "You're welcome!"