Hi everyone,
I really need to get this out. I’m on Week 3, Day 3 of six weeks of radiotherapy (already posted this on that forum) and I’m getting very concerned about how very weepy I’ve been over the past four days - culminating rather embarrassingly this morning when I started crying during the session. S**t.
I’d arrived seven minutes late after spending 20 minutes in the parking queue, and sometimes I do only just make it, and apparently they often call people through before the appointment time if they’re already in the waiting room. There were the three RT technicians, all of whom are really lovely young women, but one’s quite loud and a bit abrasive - and this one had a go at me about being late, and that I needed to leave home earlier. I wouldn’t have minded - she’s quite right, after all - but she’s got such a very loud voice, there were people waiting outside, I felt like a school-girl being told off.
I explained my situation - that although I’m officially on sick leave I’ve till got some morning commitments which I’ve tried to slip in before my appointment, but I just couldn’t hold it in and started crying. They all seemed rather surprised, but the other two immediately said ‘She can’t help it, she just shouts all the time, we’re always telling her’, and the young woman herself agreed and apologised.
Bless them, they’re all lovely, and only doing their not-much-fun job, but I’ve just been feeling so weepy and there was just no way to stem the flow.
So of course I had to have the session, still sniffling, and then they brought me in a chocolate to cheer me up, which - of course - only made me cry more! What a mess.
Still, one good thing was that they offered me a slightly later time - which I’ll have absolutely no excuse to be late for!
Afterwards I had to see the RT nurse for my check-up, so I hid in the changing room rather than go back out to the waiting room looking like a beaten-up tomato, god. I don’t know what the others said to her, but she almost immediately offered me counselling - but I live in Spain and there’s no word for ‘counselling’, so it translates as ‘psychotherapy’ ! I was just shocked, I guess - I thought it was normal to feel weepy during the treatment, so now I’m worried that there really is something to worry about. I mean, I’m not even taking Tamoxifen, or any anti-cancer drug. Plus I’ve got another three and a half weeks of treatment to go.
So my question is, has anyone else experienced this level of weepiness, and what did you do about it? I don’t feel depressed, just low, and I was thinking of riding it out, but now I feel I should do something more - I’ve considered taking St John’s Wort for the duration, but apparently it can react quite badly with radiotherapy. What I want to hear is, Don’t worry, it’ll pass in a couple of days, but maybe I need to take it more seriously?
Tomato Face
XO