At the beginning of this week, I received a call from the cancer treatment organization’s radiation therapy office. They asked me to come in on Wednesday of this week to begin the process of establishing external beam radiation therapy.

I was advised that the treatment is scheduled to begin on December 8, which is two weeks earlier than expected. This date is exactly one month after my final chemo infusion, not six weeks as was mentioned to me previously.

The radiation will end on January 3, barring any unforeseen complications. I now know what I’ll be doing this Christmas and New Year’s—resting and rebuilding my body, as the effects of radiation will be in full force by the last week of December.

There is a whole new team of medical caregivers I will be getting introduced to in this third major phase of cancer treatment. There is the radiation oncologist, whom I had met in early September who prescribed my treatment and the number of sessions of radiation required. He joins with a radiation therapist, a dosimetrist, a medical physicist, and a radiation therapy nurse who will all play a role in delivering my treatments.

It will be a rendezvous of 15 minutes duration at each treatment.

I will have 16 daily dates (Monday to Friday) with a radiation machine that will use x-rays, gamma rays, electrons, and other sources to destroy cancer cells in my body. And like chemotherapy, radiation not only kills cancer cells, it also kills good cells in the body to eradicate cancer.

I can expect to continue feeling fatigued with radiation treatments. I can expect that the radiated area will have some side effects particularly concerning the skin, which could become red, irritated, or swollen. There could also be changes in appetite, the development of anxiety or depression, and disrupted sleep.

This phase of treatment begins with a preparatory “simulation” planning session. Before the scanning and markings session, I was educated on the potential side effects of radiation and how to take care of my body.

For the scanning, the radiation therapist used a machine called a CT simulator to set up the treatment targets. The simulator takes scans of the area to be treated, which enables the radiation therapy team to use them to plan the treatment and decide how to direct the radiation to my body.

The radiation therapist then marked the treatment area of my chest with three dots made in permanent ink (tattoos). These markings form a triangular map that will be followed to ensure sure that the radiation is targeted at the same area for each treatment.

In the mix of radiation treatments, I will also have my chemo port removed on December 22. As with so much of my cancer treatment journey, this is not as simple a procedure as it sounds.

With my chronic low white blood counts, I will have to wait and see if my neutrophil counts elevate high enough to have the port removed by this date. Coupled with this, is a period of time in which I will have to stop blood thinner medication for a few days to prevent bleeding complications with the port removal.

Thankfully, there is one way I can minimize my stress levels in these daily treatments. The Canadian Cancer Society provides a transportation service for patients, run by volunteer drivers. For a very nominal fee, a driver will pick me up in a heated vehicle, take me to the treatment, wait for the treatment to conclude, and then take me home. I need not worry about winter driving and scrambling for parking for just a few minutes of treatment. I am grateful to have access to this kind of service in my city.

There are new steps waiting to be taken as I continue to walk on this cancer treatment trail. Soon, I will enter a new phase of the cancer fight. I will take these new steps with Strength, Courage, and Determination.