Phase 2 (Personal Update)

Image description: CT scan

That sound you just heard was everyone who can read a CT scan sucking in their breath at once.

Last October, Sonic Gal had some trouble bursting into sonic motion. At first she was just winded after a big fight, but then she started to have trouble going from Hell's Kitchen to Gotham in under two seconds. It took her more like five.

And then ten.

By the time we figured out that Miasma had hit her with a carcino-bio-agent dart (hoping to take her out long term so that a dimensional gateway to the world of goateed robots would provide an army to rule the world), her tumor was big enough to vote in some states. This CT scan shows it at its largest, just before treatment started. The white ovel is her rib cage and the bump in the back in the middle with the three prongs is her spinal column.

It was big, and really scary. Her oncologist/hematologist missed it–looking for a blood disease instead. Fortunately her nurse practitioner caught it just in time. And I don't mean just in time like everything is "just in time" when you write superhero realism. I mean while we waited for tests to come back, there were cardiothoracic surgeons who had been briefed on the tumor's location standing by for the hail Mary in case that bad boy shifted half a centimeter. It was that much of a time bomb in her chest.

Fortunately she's four rounds of chemo in, and at last check the softball (with a chunk wrapped unmercifully around her aorta) was looking more like a lemon with very few living cells. It's great news. And when she's not laid out from the chemo drugs or the meds to help with the chemo drugs, she's feeling a lot better. Oxygen is so awesome for living things.

But if you've been through chemotherapy, you know those drugs are not fucking around. Even a superhero can't just shrug them off.

Sonic gal did four rounds of chemo, and like a rockstar, just kept kicking ass and taking names at doing light patrols and fighting local crime. She let me and Uberdude do some of the real super-villain stuff, but you'd never have suspected she was in cancer treatment if not for her oft-changing hair color and sudden incorporation of brilliantly colored scarves into her Sonic uniforms.

However, the pain, the bone aches (from white blood cell repopulation), and the overwhelming fatigue is starting to catch up in a way that's harder to ignore after round four. Moving at sonic speeds takes a lot of energy, and when she does get hit (which happens more now that her Sonic Dodge power has slowed down) there's a lot of ache already there that makes it worse. If only she had super-endurance or uncharted healing factor or something.

And there's still two rounds of chemo to go....then radiation.

She kicked ass hardcore for months, but now she's filing for the superhero disability fund that lets her take some time off from hardcore crime fighting without being taken off the official national registers. She will of course still stop shoplifters and if she's in a bank when its robbed, she won't just let it happen, but dealing with The Death Vortex or La Muerte Eléctrica (a new local team of electricity supercharged Mexican Wrestlers who black out whole city grids by suplexing each other into power pylons) is too much right now.

The second half is just going to be a lot worse. So if you've got a good thought or three sitting around for The Hall of Rectitude or especially Sonic Gal, we sure wouldn't mind.

For my part I'm on increased patrols and Contrarian shifts–even from the last time I said that. I'm really going to keep trying to update M-Th for sure and some weekends when I can, but we're getting into the really hard part of the treatment, so there might be days here and there where I drop the ball or REALLY settle for jazz hands.