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Gigi asks me: "Daddy, I thought your cancer was gone.  How come you have to keep taking medicine?" 
"It is gone," I replied, "But the doctors want to make sure the cancer stays away, so I have to keep getting treated."
"How much longer?"
"Not much longer, now. Not much." 

I get treated every day now.  Five days a week, I go to Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and get zapped with a bunch of radiation.  I call it going "tanning."  When I come out, I'm glowing.  With glee.  That's another one down.  I am 6 treatments in.  I have 12 more to go.  I go in five days a week, Monday through Friday.  I'm usually in and out of there in about 30 minutes.  The upside is, I have my own parking pass now, so I can park for free in the hospital lot.  I'm special.

When I get my gown on, I leave the back open and walk into the radiation "vault".  The door to the vault weighs 9-thousand pounds.  The walls are 6-8 feet thick and made of lead and steel for insulation.  The radiation unit is on the ground floor of SCCA, just adjacent to the lobby.  I imagine they put it there so they wouldn't have to load these huge radiation machines onto an elevator. 



Here I am, in treatment position.  I don't know why this picture has all of those dots in it.  I'm pretty sure it's not radiation.  I am wearing the plastic mask that I was specially fitted for.  The back of my head is literally bolted to the table.  The mask is very snug.  After a few minutes, my jaw starts grinding in there because I don't have a full range of motion.  The whole idea is to keep my head immobile.  It works pretty darn well.  Above me is the radiation machine.  I get six doses of radiation, three in the front, three in the back.  There are "blocks" that are used to make sure that areas that are unaffected get no radiation.  I have a pretty large field to treat.  My left neck and chest, primarily.  It really wears me out.  Doc says I should exercise just as I did before, but not to push it.  I ran six miles today after treatment and felt fine, but later in the afternoon, I started to feel tired and took a nap.  On the far left, you can see one of the lasers that are used to position me in precisely the right spot. 

The same group of techs welcome me every day, lay me down, line me up and zap me.  One of them was telling me that I have a good body for radiation.  Wow.  Thank you?  She says that they have problems lining up barrel-chested guys or big-chested women on the machine.  First of all, the table will only hold 440 pounds.  She says some patients have been told that they will need to lose weight in order to get treatment that could potentially save their life.  "Yet another reason to stay in shape", she says. 

The other issue is, people that are large or thin are tougher to line up consistently, so they have to do more x-rays, which means more time fastened to the table with that awful mask on. 

You thought Michael Myers had a scary mask?  Try mine on for size.  When I'm done in two weeks, you can have it.  Just in time for Halloween.