Day 217 - Radiation #9 LINAC

It's Friday!!! No radiation for TWO whole days! Yipeee! Actually radiation isn't bad. It's the driving back and forth which is taxing. So not to drive to OHSU is a real treat. Not much is new. Getting my radiation every day. My skin on the left hand side is pinker than the right side. I'm not feeling too much or if any, discomfort. I really can't complain... this is cake compared to chemo!

So my treatments are comprised of five "zaps." Two are for the supraclavicular nodes. The first one is taken from the front... shooting down right on top of me. The second (the wedge is used) is taken from the underside up. The first one I am radiated for about 17 seconds. The second zap is about 10 seconds. Following the first two doses, the bolus is put on top of me and I am radiated from the top, but at an angle. The x-ray beams are being "shot" over my right boob. That's about a 23 second zap. While it's zapping the MLCs are moving into different shapes. Then the machine moves again... around to my left side... a couple of degrees below horizontal (shooting up... sort of on my side/back) and then zaps me for about 20 seconds. Then the MLCs move and I get zapped for 4 seconds. And that concludes my radiation session. :)

Fact #9 - I am using LINAC 1 for radiation at OHSU. LINAC stands for linear accelerator... and the 1 stands for machine #1. Dean gave me my fact of the day... and I digested as much as I could... so here goes. So there are particles in the machine... they get super-charged or "excited" and change into electrons which generate the x-rays... which are then used to kill the harmful cells. There's more... but I forgot some of it and need a refresher from Dean!

Thanks Wikipedia for this image. This is a patient treated with linear acceleration radiation in 1957. The little boy had his eye removed due to cancer and the other one was treated with radiation because there was a tumor in it. He wasn't the first, radiation treatment had been used since 1953. But take a look at that machine! Holy cow... maybe it was good he couldn't see it too well! I'd be scare outta my mind!