Radiation

After two weeks of healing from surgery, it was time to start radiation to his spine. Lucky enough his radiation was during my writer break so that I could ride along in the ambulance every day from the nursing home to the hospital for radiation. It was really hard having to deal with a different transport crew every day because it was hit or miss if the workers cared or not. Plus, just like when we came to the nursing home the first night, every bump in the city streets was felt in Daddy's back, I felt so badly but there's nothing I could do. So I just kept telling Daddy which streets we were turning onto, he always got so happy when I finally said we were on Lombard street because the ambulance entrance was off of Lombard.

Radiation oncology was on the basement floor because of how heavy the equipment is. We would enter the ambulance door, 1534, Daddy memorized the door code and good thing he did because some of the transport workers didn't even know it and we had to tell them. We went in, turned right, and radiation was at the end on the left. Good thing we paid attention to that too because some of the transporters were completely clueless.





We would get dropped off at radiation, Daddy would get transferred to a hospital stretcher if the treatment was going to take a while that day, otherwise the transport crews would stay with us and take us back. If they left us there, I'd have to call afterwards and wait for them to come and find us, they were pretty awful at that. Those days, Daddy and I would usually be waiting a while. We would play Trivial Pursuit on my phone and talk about nothing. I just kept trying not to imagine what it'd be like if I wasn't there...





Then we would go back the way we came, over all the bumps in all the city streets, back to the nursing home. He'd get slid from the stretcher, back to his bed, and would usually take a nap. It smelled too awful in the nursing home for me to ever be able to fall asleep there, but he needed his rest. I'd put on the TV, and draw. I drew all sorts of pictures to make Daddy's room there more bearable for him. The place was just so awful...

Te last day of radiation was something special... All of the nurses in radiation oncology are angelic women, they were always nice to Daddy and I and would actually be interested in talking to us about something other than cancer. On this day, it was Daddy's last treatment of a long two weeks. After they wheeled him out of the treatment room, one of the nurses got on the intercom and shouted CODE SUNSHINE EVERYONE CODE SUNSHINE!!! I had no idea what that meant, but they wheeled him out into the lobby and there was a bell. They got him as close to the bell as they could and Daddy rang that sucker really hard three times. Everyone was clapping and congratulating him, the staff even gives out a graduation from radiation diploma. Daddy smiled, we didn't know we would be back for more two months later...

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