Week six

Dr. Akthar mentioned that week six and seven will look a lot different than the previous five weeks.  Now, we enter into phase two of the treatments.  As far as I'm concerned, phase one had wore out it's welcome, anything different would be a welcome change.

Last night - Saturday night - was the worst so far.  So much pain, inflammation, and swelling that I just couldn't get ahead of.  Nerves are coming back to life, which is a good sign, but not all at once.  The cold compress on the side of my head seems to be the most effective, and by 9:00 p.m., things were starting to calm down.  By 10:00 p.m., I was able to take my final meds for the day, and get to bed.

The burn is the worst.  When I was a young apprentice mechanic at the Caterpillar Tractor Dealer in San Diego, I burned my leg with a steam cleaner.  I had no idea that you could suffer a third degree burn from steam - I suppose I always thought that had to come from a flame.  I was filling the big mop bucket with boiling hot soapy water when the wand got away from me and blasted the side of my calf on my right leg, right through my pants.  It hurt, but I didn't think much of it until we were dressing out of our uniforms and into street clothes.  One of the guys said, "What did you do to your leg?"  By this time, from my ankle to my knee was bright red (first degree burn), an area about four inches in diameter was badly blistered (second degree burn), and an area about the size of a silver dollar, the flesh was gone completely (third degree burn).  For the first three weeks I had to go to the burn unit everyday.  It took months and months to heal.  What I'm dealing with now is nothing compared to that, but burns are the worst.

Week six brought a whole new schedule, and a whole new team of therapists.  For some reason, I had my first treatment today - Sunday - at 2:55 p.m.  I just got back from there.  

My new therapists are Jacob and Jamie.  They gave me a quick briefing before I climbed up on the table.  These last ten treatments are very targeted to just a couple of specific areas.  Not that the alignments were any less important before, they are of absolute importance now.  Jacob explained that there will be several X-rays taken to ensure no margin for error.  

With the mask securely clamped to the table, and me in my ready position, they put the nozzle in position #1 and took the first X-ray.  This changes the angle of the X-ray to be perpendicular to nozzle.  One more X-ray, and Jamie came in to fit the position #1 head on the nozzle.  With everything ready to go, Jacob took one more X-ray, and said, "Hold that position."  

It's a little intimidating.  The mask fits pretty tight, but I can still move 2 or 3mm in any direction.  I concentrated on a single spot that I could see through the webbing of the mask.  Position #1 treatment only took about one minute - the second, and half of the third verse of Lynyrd Skynyrd "Sweet Home Alabama".  It took longer to set up position #1.  Just in case you're keeping track, I laid on the table at the beginning of Led Zeppelin "Kashmir" - my favorite Zeppelin tune (8:32), along with the first verse of Sweet Home Alabama (1:30?)

I could hear the magnet lock on the door release.  Jamie entered the room to repositioned the nozzle, and with a lot of clunking and banging, change the head on the nozzle for position #2.  Jacob took another X-ray.  "Hold that position." He said.

Position #2 took a little bit longer than position #1, but since I don't consider Rod Stewart "Maggie May" as classic rock, I didn't bother to give it a time stamp.

My last two weeks of treatments start on the early evening shift at 5:50 p.m., rather than the 7:50 a.m. shift that I had grown used to.  That will be a bit of a change.  I'm usually winding down by then.

I'm on the home stretch.  The end is in sight.