Breaking Down My External Beam Radiation Experience: What Nobody Tells You

I got three tattoos this year and I didn't choose a single one of them.

Not the fun kind. Not the "I've always wanted this" kind. These three were part of my external beam radiation treatment for stage three cervical cancer, and I didn't even know they were coming until the day they showed up.

If that sentence made you sit up a little, good. That's exactly how I felt the day it happened to me.

In the latest episode of the podcast, I sat down with the actual paperwork I was handed at the start of my treatment and went through it line by line. Not the polished version. Not what it's supposed to look like on paper. What it actually felt like to live through it, five days a week, for five weeks straight.

Here's some of what I unpacked.

The tattoos nobody warns you about

Before you even start treatment, they need to line you up perfectly with the machine every single time. That's what the tattoos are for. One on each thigh, and one, well, you can probably guess where the third one went.

I call them my little survivor tattoos now. But I'll be honest, they were not the tattoos I had pictured getting first.

The routine that becomes your whole life

I was at the hospital almost every single day for five weeks. Some days twice, because of scheduling around the Christmas holidays. You lie there in bean bags molded to your body, completely still, while the machine does its work. I used to close my eyes and just repeat "I have healed" over and over while it moved around me.

It sounds simple when I say it like that. It was not simple to live through.

The side effects that don't make it onto the pamphlet

The paperwork lists things like bladder irritation, bowel irritation, fatigue, skin reactions. What it doesn't tell you is how it actually feels to walk into a hospital not knowing if today is the day your body decides to fall apart on you. I was lucky with some things, unlucky with others. I'll take you through exactly what hit me and what didn't.

Why the ending isn't really the ending

Here's something I wish someone had told me earlier. Being cleared of cancer doesn't mean your journey is finished. The bulk of my treatment has stopped, but I'm still dealing with fatigue, sleep issues, and things that started well after the "official" treatment ended. If you're in that stage right now, wondering why you don't feel like you're supposed to feel "done," you're not imagining it.

A few questions worth sitting with

If you're currently going through treatment, or supporting someone who is, ask yourself:

• Do I actually know what to expect, or am I just hoping for the best?
• Have I given myself permission to talk about the hard parts, even the awkward ones?
• Am I measuring my recovery by someone else's timeline instead of my own?

There's no perfect way to answer these. I'm still figuring some of them out myself.

If any part of this resonated with you, I'd really love for you to listen to the full episode. I go into way more detail than I could fit here, and I think there's something in it for anyone who has ever felt overwhelmed by a diagnosis, a treatment plan, or just life throwing something unexpected at them.

And if you know someone who needs to hear this today, send it their way. Sometimes the most helpful thing you can do for someone is let them know they're not the only one going through it.