What Radiation is Like + Medical Leave + Hair Update

Radiation:
I'm currently about 1/3 through radiation therapy.  I've completed 5 out of 17 treatments, so a couple of more weeks or so to go.

Radiation is much easier to deal with than chemo, but it's still pretty annoying.

I'm just slightly run down day to day, nothing like chemo- it's more of a subtle-annoying effect.  My muscles in my neck are inflamed from radiation, and feel like I've over worked them without actually doing anything. I'm also starting to get dry mouth, but Biotene should help with that.  The annoying part is that the side effects are constant, and increase slightly after every treatment. Having to come in everyday doesn't help much either.  Starting to need a little more sleep everyday, and Biotene a little more often.  I haven't started to get dry skin yet, but in about a week I should- by that time I should my aloe gel to apply.

Radiation Therapy basically is like this:

• Come in, change into medical gown- top only as that's where I get treatment.
• Lay down on the table, on my custom head rest, they line up the lasers in the ceiling with the tattoo on my chest.
• Weird note: The machine at my hospital is new, it's a combo scanner and radiation machine, so it's different than I was expecting.  It is however very precise.
• Another weird side note: There are two little color monitors on both sides of the opening on the front of the machine, when I enter the room, they bring up my radiation plan, and it brings up my photo on the little screens- just to be sure that the person they're sticking in the machine is who is supposed to go in.
• They fit my mask.  The mask is larger than I thought it would be, mainly because it's supposed to hold still the areas where the radiation is going, so mine covers my head down to the top of my chest. It's TIGHT.  They had to cut little slits into its neck so I could swallow.  I can't speak well, or open my eyes much inside it- kind of looks like this.  Scratch your face before they put it on- it's not coming off for 15 minutes.
• Then when they're ready to start the scan, the techs leave the room, and the giant metal door marked "radiation" closes on the room.
• Once the scan is done- usually 2-5 minutes later, the bed comes out, and the techs make some minor changes if needed after the doctor compares the scan with the radiation plan.
• Then radiation starts.  They leave and the giant door closes again, the bed moves in and it starts.  The bed moves out, then back in as my radiation plan is a 2-part process.
• Then the techs come back in and remove the mask.
• Other note: the machine is loud as hell, mainly from the fans.  When radiation is working, it makes a strange grinding rasping noise, like a sack of gravel being dragged on asphalt in a drumming beat.

Medical Leave:
I'm sending in what hopefully will be my last medical leave request for work, I'll find out tomorrow from my Doctor when I can get the okay to go back to work- looking like possibly the start of June, but it all really depends on my recovery time from not just radiation, but you know- all of it.

Hair:
I've got about 1/8"+ fuzz growing on the top of my head still, and hair in general starting to grow faster.  My facial hair is starting to darken a little bit, but is still pretty blonde-ish, however it's growing at almost a normal rate now, it's not as soft as it was when it was new.

Cat:
Wendy and I made a rosemary brined fried chicken for our late new year's get together with friends, it was amazingly good.

Miles could smell something was going on.