Mask making

Yesterday, I went for my initial planning visit with Dr. Bollinger, my radiation oncologist. I really enjoy talking with him and came away from our session feeling confident that everything is on track. They made a mask of my face that will be used to lock my head in place during the treatments. Kind of a strange experience. Imagine laying on flat on your your back and having a warm, moist sheet of some sort of plastic is pressed down over your face to the level of the table. The plastic is initially stretched flat across a horseshoe like apparatus that literally bolts to the both the CT scanner and the radiation delivery machine. This mask then sets up solid in about five minutes and is a very close fit to your face; so snug it is hard to open and close your eyes! The mask also shrinks a bit further after they remove it from you (or you from it) so when they bolt you in place you are locked down tight with literally no wiggle room. Initially, there are no eye or mouth holes so you can only breath and see through the pin holes in the plastic. When they took me in for a CT scan (which produces the data that will be used to target my treatments) and bolted me down to the machine I did OK for the first few minutes but ended up having some kind of claustrophobia/anxiety attack. As a result, they had to unbolt me and start over. Fortunately, after some deep breathing (and nose blowing), I managed to make it through the ten-minute process on the second attempt. I am scheduled to begin my actual radiation treatments next Monday (all the dosimetry calculations are done at Roger Maris Cancer Center in Fargo and then independently recalculated here for verification). Once the first treatment is over, they assure me that they will cut eye and mouth holes in the mask. That should make the process less daunting. It sounds like the treatments themselves only last about five minutes. Depending on what the dosing calculations look like, I could end up with either three weeks at a relatively higher dosage or four weeks at a lower dosage. Apparently this has more to do with minimizing collateral damage than with the effectiveness of the treatment itself. Feeling good today. James is playing upstairs with Quincy, one of his daycare buddies. All for now. /dps