Saturday night and a glass of red!

Back on the treatment trail, will it work? I most definitely hope so!!

The RT treatment was quite straight forward, strip down to tee shirt and shorts and up onto a couch amid high-tech gubbins to be carefully wedged into place so that the radiographers could line up their x-ray machine on one of my tattoo marks.  I was told "DON'T MOVE" while the operators went and hid a a lead shielded room.  The machine clicked and hummed while the timer counted down, more clicks and the humming stopped, staff appeared from their dugout, realigned the  machine, ordered "DON'T MOVE" and disappeared again.  When the third dot had been zapped treatment was over until the same time next day and so on for the rest of the week.  Because my treatment slot was 11:20 it made a serious hole in the day so with a bit of pleading and eyelash fluttering I managed to chat the young lady programming appointments to slot me in at the beginning of the day, so on the Monday of week two I had an early start to get back up to Inverness but it was worth it to have the rest of  the day to myself.
Because of the travelling involved while I was undergoing treatment I was accommodated in an NHS flat at the hospital from Monday through Friday and home over the weekend.  Knowing that as the therapy progressed its effect on me would be more and more tiring so I had resolved to make the best use of these early weeks.
My mountain bike was in the back of the car so after my therapy session I was away.  Culloden Battlefield (National Trust coffee shop), along the Caledonian Canal from the basin at Clachnaharry (nice little pub) past Bught Park (cafe in the Floral Hall) to Dochgarroch (small cafe).  These trips out on the bike along with walks into town and browsing through the books in Waterstones (coffee shop), or spending hours looking through Leaky's huge stock of second hand books (coffee shop) kept me occupied and gave me some exercise.  The last two weeks of treatment were beginning to take a toll on me, the accumulated doses of radiation were making me very tired.  Now after treatment I would manage a short walk or ride, back for a shower and then read or sit out in the sun, after lunch I would sleep or read, dinner, perhaps some TV, a shower and bed.  The days were becoming a blur and the end of therapy was a bit of an anticlimax, a final session on the Friday morning, say my goodbyes to the radiography team, back to my room to pack up, load the car and away back to sunny Fort William.