Monday, December 29, 2008

First real treatment done!

Above and below are pictures of my new friend! Once again, that's not me. You can see the laser lines that help them align me in the machine properly. When turned on, the machine projects a beam of radiation into my body - seems like about 10 seconds each? The really cool thing is that they actually project the beam 12 times. Each beam goes through at a different angle all around the neighborhood. The drawing below is a diagram of half of the steps. Each beam causes some damage to all the cells it passes through. But the area they really want to zap extra hard is the small (red) area where all the beams cross. That area will get 12 times the radiation of any other area, causing less damage to the parts of me I want to keep, and more damage to the parts of me that I'd just as soon be rid of! Pretty clever if you ask me!
Just a note that I found my camera that has been missing for about 2 weeks, so I'll try to get some actual shots of the machine.

5 comments:

Anne said...

so, where was it?

Don Olney said...

If the questions is where is the cancer, the answer is that they do not really know. The most likely place is what they call the "prostetic bed", and I call the "old neighborhood". That is where the focal point is, and if they are right the undetectable cluster of cancer cells will be zapped. A friend, on hearing that I'm getting undetectable cancer radiated, asked "and you are still going to this doctor?"

Anne said...

Thank you! Actually, what I was wondering was: where was the camera?

Don Olney said...

No wonder I lost the camera! I can't even figure out a simple question? It was in the back part of my office at work - sitting sort of behind a plant? Probably set it down while putting something in my mini fridge upon arrival at work.

Anne said...

or--and I think this is the more likely scenario--that plant of yours is turning into one of its Little Shop Of Horrors brethren and *took* the camera...for what nefarious purposes we can only imagine....