These days when you get radiation for breast cancer, you fill out a form weekly to monitor changes in your breast, your skin on the breast, your tiredness, and your moods.
I don't understand why I have to report any feelings of sadness, depression, lethargy.
Hey, I have cancer, right? So of course it's going to get to me at times.
I also don't understand whether my feelings are caused by radiation and cancer or by a host of other things. Filling out this form doesn't measure what's happening in your life and in the world besides radiation.
After all, three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and had been missing since June 12. They had been hitchhiking home from a religious school, Shavei Hevron yeshiva.
Their bodies were found on June 30, and their funeral was on July 1. Israel had already started bombing Gaza and Palestinian cities.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/01/world/middleeast/Israel-missing-teenagers.html
I had been crying about the sadness of the abduction, on the weekend before my first radiation treatment, June 30. I filled out the form on July 1 saying that yes, I had been sad. I had been crying. I marked it "mild."
Then on July 2 a Palestinian teen was abducted from his home and murdered.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/17/world/meast/israel-palestinian-teen-death-indictment/
As the month continues, Israel has been bombing Gaza increasingly. Hamas has been firing rockets into Israel. On Wednesday July 16, Isareli rockets killed four little kids playing soccer on the beach in Gaza.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middle-east/2014/07/16/four-young-boys-killed-playing-gaza-beach/Lxrn3OaifRIw4RFfyj8KZP/story.html
And UCLA still wants to know if I have been sad in the past week, on a scale of 1 to 5.
While reeling from the deaths in Israeli and Palestine, we started some home construction on July 1. Half of our living room furniture is now in our small kitchen; the other half is covered with plastic in a corner of the empty living room. We can't enter our front door because a sheet of plastic hangs between the chimney area and the rest of the house.
Instead we walk past the demolished chimney to the back door, past several ineffective levels of fencing to try to keep the dogs in the yard. The bigger dog keeps getting out; one day I had to pick her up from the pound and pay $46.
Along with the radiation and the grim international news and the home construction, I'm wearing a soft cast for a fracture of a bone spur on my left heel. (On May 5 I stumbled over a cement block marking a parking space in a garage--while on my way to buy a book on breast cancer.) That injury hasn't healed, may need surgery.
So on Tuesday I looked at the question about sadness during my radiation and marked it not "mild" but "occasional."
I guess radiation is going to get credit for my sadness because there was no space to note that most of it is based on discouraging events, both international and at home.
I don't understand why I have to report any feelings of sadness, depression, lethargy.
Hey, I have cancer, right? So of course it's going to get to me at times.
I also don't understand whether my feelings are caused by radiation and cancer or by a host of other things. Filling out this form doesn't measure what's happening in your life and in the world besides radiation.
After all, three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and had been missing since June 12. They had been hitchhiking home from a religious school, Shavei Hevron yeshiva.
Their bodies were found on June 30, and their funeral was on July 1. Israel had already started bombing Gaza and Palestinian cities.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/01/world/middleeast/Israel-missing-teenagers.html
I had been crying about the sadness of the abduction, on the weekend before my first radiation treatment, June 30. I filled out the form on July 1 saying that yes, I had been sad. I had been crying. I marked it "mild."
Then on July 2 a Palestinian teen was abducted from his home and murdered.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/17/world/meast/israel-palestinian-teen-death-indictment/
As the month continues, Israel has been bombing Gaza increasingly. Hamas has been firing rockets into Israel. On Wednesday July 16, Isareli rockets killed four little kids playing soccer on the beach in Gaza.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middle-east/2014/07/16/four-young-boys-killed-playing-gaza-beach/Lxrn3OaifRIw4RFfyj8KZP/story.html
And UCLA still wants to know if I have been sad in the past week, on a scale of 1 to 5.
While reeling from the deaths in Israeli and Palestine, we started some home construction on July 1. Half of our living room furniture is now in our small kitchen; the other half is covered with plastic in a corner of the empty living room. We can't enter our front door because a sheet of plastic hangs between the chimney area and the rest of the house.
Instead we walk past the demolished chimney to the back door, past several ineffective levels of fencing to try to keep the dogs in the yard. The bigger dog keeps getting out; one day I had to pick her up from the pound and pay $46.
Along with the radiation and the grim international news and the home construction, I'm wearing a soft cast for a fracture of a bone spur on my left heel. (On May 5 I stumbled over a cement block marking a parking space in a garage--while on my way to buy a book on breast cancer.) That injury hasn't healed, may need surgery.
So on Tuesday I looked at the question about sadness during my radiation and marked it not "mild" but "occasional."
I guess radiation is going to get credit for my sadness because there was no space to note that most of it is based on discouraging events, both international and at home.
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