Tomorrow, we irradiate my brain.
This week we made the head mold that will hold my head immobile. It was a lot like having a hot hockey mask stretched over my face, then being strapped into a broken kiddie ride at the carnival. It was very much like that. It was exactly like that, and I also now know what a beard depilation is.
Sorry, but I imagine this treatment as fare on the a la
carte menu at an eatery from a future century:
“Yes, waiter, I’ll have the irradiated breakfast brain
special, please. Over easy, no toast, and a side of potato skins, not too
crispy.”
This will be a one-shot radiation procedure. After that, we
let my cerebellum simmer and return to a systemic attack on the leftovers in my
chest with concurrent chemo- and immunotherapy courses.
No, I don’t know why I’m making all this one big food metaphor.
It may have something to do with how I sometimes sup at the
Michelin three-star restaurant on the avenue of what I think, and other times
pig-out at Big Skinny’s greasy spoon diner down the back alley of what I feel.
Or, it could be because having both an enlarged cancerous
lymph node in my lung and now a pop-up tumor in my head is like … like …
walking an endless mezzanine toward an unattended, locked and understocked food
cart.
Meanwhile, as I meet with my neurosurgical oncologist or my
radiation oncologist or my Harley dealer (just checking to see if you’re still
with me), it’s clear that I am in the best hands in the business.
The Docs may all look like Doogie Howser, but they talk
Einsteinian, way beyond my practicing ken. Still, I have years of field nursing
experience, much of it in hospice and eldercare, and I’m able to dumb-up enough
to understand what’s happening to me.
And --- maybe what’s more important in living with cancer
--- what isn’t happening.
I do have fun in the waiting rooms, and had the pleasure of
being served by a wonderful soul who came by with her "harp cart,"
and applied her art/science “reverie harp” to my skull.
Perfectly-named. She will get full credit for fixing my
tumor when the day comes, along with the Rad people. Pentatonic scale,
penetrating vibrations, smooth grooves --- Ahhhh!
In the examination rooms, I’m having fun going through the
cabinets, playing the placarded anti-superhero, or measuring myself and
wondering whereinhell the half-inch in height I’ve had all my adult life has
gone.
No. Whoever installed the wall measuring stick wasn’t
a finish carpenter. Yeah, that’s it. I’m fine and the world is all wrong.
(Tomorrow I’ll flip that sentiment, but right now it’s
getting me through today).
More as we go, El
