I have read, experienced, and learned a lot in the last four weeks. To bring you up to date, we’re going to cover none of it, not yet. Instead, we’re going to leap over it and bring you straight to the now.

Radiation treatment began yesterday.

I’ll be having a short, two-week course of high dose radiation to the remaining mass in the lung. It will be five sessions in total. And it’s a brilliant system. Here’s how it works. Cancer cells die from exposure to radiation much more readily than healthy cells that are meant to be in our body. But radiation can be hard on the natural cells anyway. So, the trick is to expose the cancer cells to the exact amount of radiation to cause them to die, which is also less than the amount that would kill the healthy cells you want. Smart right?

But it gets smarter. In the radiation equipment, they deliver the beams of radiation to the cancer cells from multiple angles which further reduces the amount of radiation exposure for the healthy cells. Say for example that they shoot the beams of radiation at the cancer from 5 different angles. They would blast in only 20% of the required amount from each angle. In sum, the cancer gets 100%, but the healthy tissue from each of the angles only receives exposure to 20% of the dose, reducing risk to the healthy cells. Genius.

We had been waiting almost a month for radiation to begin and there was a great deal of anticipation heading into yesterday. I don’t want to beat the rowing metaphor of The Third 500 to death, but yesterday felt very familiar. It felt like race day. As I moved through the morning getting ready to head to Froedtert, there was a great deal of silence and focus. Very few words were spoken or exchanged. Only what was necessary. Everyone pretty much left me alone to let me get ready for radiation. At some point in the late morning, I realized it felt exactly like race day.

There’s not a lot for the patient to do during radiation. You just keep still, while they get you lined up. It’s all about positioning you into the equipment so it can deliver the radiation to exactly the right spot. Once they get me in position, I have to hold it. Don’t move. For a good 25 minutes. They put marks on my body to line me up just right and they run a simulation. Don’t move. I wait for the doctor to sign off on simulation and technicians come and do a little more adjusting. I am working very hard to not move and I’m thinking about it so much that it’s only making it harder. Finally, one of the techs says, “OK we’re ready to do it for real now. This will take about 6 minutes.” And I think to myself, “Of course it will.” You see, that’s how long it takes rowers to race 2000 meters.

I’m back for round 2 of radiation tomorrow morning.