Vorlon Whispers

Back from Getting Fitted for Radiation

I just got back from the radiation place. It was an interesting experience. What they did was put this warm plastic fishnet type material over my face as I was lying on the table on my back. They stretched it over my head and clamped it to the table. They had me hold very still while the form cooled and hardened.

This will be used in the future to fix my head to a specific spot, when I go in for my treatments. That way they can be sure they are always hitting the same spot.

While they had me clamped down, I couldn’t even talk, they took a couple of x-rays to make sure they had me correctly lined up. There are lasers on the machine and they put masking tape on the form and used a magic marker to mark where the laser hit. That way, when I return, they line up the spot with the lasers and they are good to go. I was a little disappointed the machine wasn’t smart enough to record the x and y coordinates of where I was and they could just punch my coordinates in and put me in exactly the right spot.

I made a discovery while lying there and them shooting me with x-rays – you can see x-rays. Well, at least the x-rays seem to stimulate the visual receptors of the optic nerve or the photo receptors at the back of the eyeball. What I saw was sort of like a camera flash. It had a blue and white color to it and lasted only as long as the x-ray machine was on. It was almost like someone was shining a flashlight from my left or right. They x-rayed me from both directions.

It turns out the radiation will be gamma rays – very high energy. They have a linear accelerator to generate the gamma rays. The said they will shoot me from one side and then from the other. Each day the actual treatment will only take a few seconds per side.

I start my treatments 8:00 am next Tuesday and continue everyday, skipping weekends, until March 27. Then they will do an MRI and see how I’m doing.

The tech told me that way this treatment works is, the radiation damages the cells it hits. Cancer cells are not as healthy as normal tissue. Normal tissue will repair itself quite quickly. The cancer cells cannot repair themselves as well. With repeated exposures, the cancer cells die and the healthy ones live on.

At least that's the theory. Let hope my cancer cells are very sickly and it will take only a simple push to wipe them out.

Posted by The Vorlon at March 1, 2006 3:41 PM