Am I glowing yet?

I have now had five radiation treatments, and I am still waiting to explore the full range of side effects. I am wheezy, most definitely, and found the recent heavy yellow dust day to be rather more uncomfortable than usual. Welcome to Korea. Occasionally, there are gripping pains in my chest or side, which I have been told to expect, and the skin around my nipple feels hot and a bit tender. I had a lovely cwtch with Phavana's boy, Santi, yesterday, and needed to shift positions more than usual due to discomfort. Walking the stairs at school without gasping is slightly challenging, but I am determined not to take the elevator, as it is really the only exercise I am getting at the moment. Four flights- gak, choke, pant... I am spending much more time in the faculty lounge on the second floor these days, so as not to need to trek up to the office so frequently.

Otherwise, I think that I am again getting off lightly. We will see. It could get worse. I have picked up a daily ritual with my classes: I shut off all the lights and ask them whether I glow in the dark. They assure me that I do not. I shall keep you informed of any changes in this, and shall provide photos.

The sessions themselves are uneventful: I take a taxi to the hospital, head to radiology, disrobe to my waist, put on a short cotton hospital jacket- pink, because clearly I am a girl- tuck my belongings into a locker and head round the corner to the seats that line the corridor. A lab-coated young man pokes his nose around the edge of a door and calls a pretty close approximation to my name, and I follow him to the far end of the hall, where an automatic sliding wooden door hisses open. Another few steps through an antechamber, and I turn the corner into the treatment room, where I drop my locker key and my phone into a plastic box and I clamber gracelessly onto the platform on the other side of the room. At the head of the platform is a dome, in some ways resemblant of the magical burrito from the MRI machine. My legs are placed on a prop, designed, I think, just to keep them still. I am laid out with my head on a second prop, and the young man is joined by a colleague. The two of them open my jacket and expose my chest. They tut a little, to see that the grid marks placed there previously have faded, and then manhandle my hips and torso into exactly the right position. When I am assembled to their satisfaction, they flip the sides of the jacket back up over me and stride out of the room.

Music is playing in the background. On weekdays, it seems, orchestral numbers are on the playlist. Yesterday, it was rockier and Korean. Above my head, there is a picture panel with blue skies, clouds and cherry blossoms; all very soothing. There is a click and a whir, and the platform raises about a foot. Surrounding it are two oddly shaped attachments: one with an end that resembles a probe, the other with a large circular end that lies parallel to the platform, but that moves around me throughout the process. I think that this it the device that actually zaps me. There is also a set of cameras in the room. One is directly above the platform, another is off to my left. I have not seen this one, but I know it is there because I have spotted a photograph of myself in the technicians' room as I have exited the corridor.

Another click. The platform shifts several times as somewhere off in the distance, the technicians remotely re-adjust my position. Then another whir and a bell. The contraptions around me start to move, the circular plate shifting to my left while the probe moves above my chest. It sounds like it is being wound up. I cannot really feel anything, but I am strangely aware that something is taking place. More clicks, and the plate moves up over my chest while the probe shifts to the right. At the centre of the circular plate is a large rectangular window. Through it, I see what look like long, thin metal teeth- they most closely resemble the metallic teeth on the mechanism of a music box. However, instead of being twanged by the ridges on a rotating wheel, they slide apart from each other in a strange, non-linear pattern of openings and closings. The winding lasts for about a minute, there is a snap and a re-adjustment as the teeth close, and then the motion is repeated. This happens three times, the whole process taking about five minutes. After a final click, I hear the air in the antechamber shift, and one of the technicians bustles back into the room. He pushes a button and the platform sinks back to its original position and he helps me sit up. I offer a cheery 'thank you!' and head out of the room, tying the jacket shut as I go. Everything is so business-like that I feel compelled to move quickly.

I throw 'See you tomorrow!' to the other technicians, return to the locker room to dress, and exchange farewells with the receptionists before leaving the department and taking the escalator to the main floor. Taxis await outside, I show the cabbie the card with the school address on it, and sit back for the fifteen minute ride back to Songdo. The cab journey is longer than the treatment has taken. My mouth tastes like porcelain on the ride back and my face feels flushed. Any other reactions wait, and I only really notice them absentmindedly. Perhaps I have a bit of a dizzy turn, or the room shifts a little when I look at my feet. So far, it does not feel any worse than that.

So, all that being comparatively uneventful, what else is happening? Well, the promotion I was lined up for at work has fallen through. We were going to open residences and I was going to be directing the program. You're clever- you can see that the use of the past tense indicates a shift. There will now be no new residences, for reasons that I shall not go into here. I have been told that if they do ever happen, that I will be running them, which is only small comfort, considering how excited I was about the prospect of getting back into administration (management, Brit-types). Honestly, it felt like my lungs were able to fill up with air properly again. Now, the brief hope is extinguished- no promotion. So, what will I do next year? I cannot yet leave Korea. As much as I try to come up with a route out, none really exists yet. There is no school anywhere that would pick up a candidate with three months remaining of her cancer treatment, and mine is set to continue until October. So, I stay another year for my health. The risk is that I will never get back into leadership after four years out of it, therefore, I will finish the damned Masters, making myself marginally more attractive as an employment prospect. Then, I will see how it goes. Next year, I will resign. I will attend as many job fairs as I need to to find another job, preferably a promoted post. If I do not find one, well, then I will take a year out. I will get yet another Masters, in a subject that I LIKE, such as creative writing or literature or history or some such, whether it will do my career any good or not. I will then start applying again for international jobs, because it's actually rather fun working overseas, and I can quite clearly not go back to the UK.

Then I will see what happens next.

In all that, I maintain what Rich used to call a 'rigid commitment to flexibility'. 'Cause if the last year has taught me nothing else, it is that making plans is like spitting in the wind- you have no idea where it will end up, but likely it will be on your face. Let the dice fly high!