This has been the year of the machine! Starting last December with the DaVinci robotic surgery system, I have met lots of very cool high tech machines. Today it was the Oldelft Simulix-MC ... one part of a system to figure out where to aim the radioactive beam that will presumably kill off that little colony of cancer cells left over after last year's surgery.I was positioned on that table in the bottom left of the picture. A bean bag chair like device was placed under my legs.... legs are kind of nestled into place, and then a vacuum pump draws all the air from the bean bag, leaving a very sturdy mold that will allow them to place my lower half in exactly the same position for each of the 35 treatments. Unlike a lot of medical stuff these days, when I'm done, they can let the air back into the bag, and use it over again to help save someone else!
The table then rises and rotates into position with me in between the upper and lower arms in the center of the picture. The head above is an x-ray machine, and the black and white box below is the receiver/plate holder. If you look to the far left, a vertical white box with a small red window near the top puts out a laser beam that strikes my right side just above the hip... another laser beam from the opposite corner of the room, targets my left hip, and one above lights up a spot on my stomach. Jill, the technician, gives me three small tattoos at the spots where the laser beams hit. The combination of these marks, and the leg mold, will align me properly every time!
Several X-rays are then taken, and later in the day, I am carefully aligned in a CAT scan machine at another hospital in town for corresponding CAT scan images. Highland hospital's CAT scan machine was out of order today. Lucille has brought along my leg mold!
Over the next few days, with the help of computers, the CAT scan and the x-rays, will be used to create a program that will precisely target my cancer. Starting in about 10 days, 35 radiation treatments will damage all the cells in a very carefully mapped and confined neighborhood. Healthy cells will recover over the weekend breaks, and after the treatments. Cancer cells, with their rapid growth and reproduction, will not be able to recover so well, and will end up in pretty bad shape, unable to continue their process.
A strange process of killing off part of me so that the rest of me can go on enjoying this fabulously wonderful life with which I have been blessed!
Thank you to Dr. Liu, Jill, Lucille, and to the folks at Strong Hospital willing to cover for the broken CAT scan machine at Highland.
The title???? My 333rd post!
2 comments:
What an interesting post! Thx so much for the explanation.
I made myself smile a little tho. My sister has a head and neck cancer. When she had her radiation treatment, they made a mask of her face to mark the spot.
Today I thot of a bean-bag to do that. When they pulled out the air for the permanent mask, she would have suffocated by then. *small laff*.....I guess I have a weired sense of humor, eh?
Very interesting, I agree. Thinking of you also as you go through your treatments, etc.
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