It Might Get Messy

Marie Sklodowska-Curie did much of her work on radioactivity and radioactive elements in a little shed serving as a general laboratory. She carted test tubes hot enough to glow in her pockets. Her papers from the 1890s, including her cookbooks, for crap’s sake, are too radioactive to be safe. They are kept under lead shields and access requires protective measures. Unsurprisingly, she died of radiation-related aplastic anemia.


My treatment consisted of two-a-day radiation exposures 5 days a week for many weeks. Of course, the technology is awesome, and allows the radiation to be focused precisely on the tumors, primary and secondaries, each in their turn. The big machine is choreographed to shift around, rotate, move across, move in, and at one point in the dance the table I’m lying on jumps itself up and forward about a quarter meter. 

Here’s me under the complex 
radiation exposure machinery.


Since the tissues the therapeutic doses of radiation are focused on are already malignant, I’m not really worried about the potential for triggering future malevolent mutations. But the technicians work in a room in which I am hard-imaged the entire treatment time. The following photos show the different kinds of images they have access to and use to control the process. You see there are both real photo-quality images and other images built from the 3D photo images. 

Now, I don’t know what kind of radiation they use to produce the basic image and associated satellite images. But it seems a sure bet that it’s bathing more than my tumors in radioactivity. I’m sure with a little research I could figure out how to estimate the increased likelihood of triggering a de novo malignancy via the imaging radiation.


But not now. The treatment to date has been successful, the primary tumor is largely toast and the secondaries are shriveled to raisiny, maybe sun-dried-tomato, status. M. Curie traded part of her life for the science driven by her radiation exposure. In other words, it was worth it to her. Given the advanced state of my tumors when I presented for treatment, I’m right there with her. New tumors later? We’ll deal with ‘em if we have to. Until then, a (non-alcoholic) toast in the memory of my tumors.


More detail to follow. Soon they’ll start the diagnostics all over again with a PET scan to localize metabolically active tissue and a neck dissection to check it out. For the moment, believe me, I’m just glad to be here!


Newish material is up at all the web logs, if you get a chance check out http://docviper.livejournal.com/, http://theresaturleinmysoup.blogspot.com/, and http:sustainablebiospheredotnet.blogspot.com/ . Thanks!


PS—for anybody who’s been looking for me via email. I’ve been too sick the past week and a half to get to it with any regularity. I should be getting on top of it now, though. Apologies.