2 down, 13 to go

[azurelunatic]

Two appointments in the beam lairs. Had a lovely time chatting with the people involved. Day 1 involved an orientation from the nurse. I'll have my first interim doctor appointment on Wednesday after beam o'clock.

The state of radiotherapy linear accelerators seems to have moved to wall-mounted units vs. the huge free-standing machines that I met in 2016. The free-standing machines (I think a Varian model) look ABSOLUTELY like stand mixers minus the bowl. I have a lovely 6 liter stand mixer at home. When I was young and able-bodied, I worked with an industrial stand mixer of about 60 gallons, I think, so the home-sized mixers always seem tiny and cute to me.

Day 1: The part where I had to lie still on the table under the thing that looks like a 600 gallon KitchenAid mixer head and not make eye contact with the Freakin' Lasers on the ceiling and walls was not lovely.

I calmed myself by counting the squares on the non-mixer-head panels that also whirled around me, first in one dimension, then in the same dimension to cross-check my counting, then again in that same dimension to see which of my counts it agreed with, then in the other dimension (it also checked with the second count), and then attempted to count the squares one by one.

Day 2: The part where I had to lie still on the table under the thing that looks like a 600 gallon KitchenAid mixer head WITH FREAKIN' LASERS in it, and got to relax underneath an eye drape was much better.

The lasers on the ... Versa? ... machine were in addition to the ceiling and probably also wall lasers. (They did not have laser safety glasses. I asked. The techs sounded like this was the first time anyone had asked, but also like it was a reasonable request that in retrospect they were surprised that no one had asked about before.)

I am, yet again, discovering novel bugs in the system. I may ask about sponsoring some laser safety glasses.

The Versa HD room has Bert on the door. Infinity has Ernie, with duck, and a tiny Bert on his shoulder. The Approved Patient Nutrition fridge has a Futurama Fry magnet. "Man, all this prolonged exposure to radiation is making me thirsty."

Comments

[pauamma]

Thanks for the update.

[senmut]

I like touches like Bert and Ernie and Fry.

[azurelunatic]

It's the sort of thing that makes me feel right at home. I already feel comfortable in this facility because I got to do a little tour of the Kaiser Oakland facility, hosted by a physicist. I grew up with geophysicists. The mental image that stands out is the grizzled physicist casually leaning a hand on the brachytherapy machine while talking about the Varian family (the people).

[silveradept]

Eye covers to avoid staring at the beams seems like a useful thing.

[kore]

No laser glasses? ! ! !

Ahahahah I also always do that trick of counting squares and then checking my counting when I'm being scanned or hooked up to something. Except MRI machines don't have squares, so I have to do prime numbers then.

[azurelunatic]

Having noticed the problem, I think laser safety glasses should be mandatory, especially when the patient is sedated. But before I thought about it, I didn't really think about it, you know?

Usually I do ceiling squares, but the squares on the machine were closer.

[sine_nomine]

So glad for the update - and that it seems to have gone as well as it could.

[vass]

How long does a session with the beams take?

I am, yet again, discovering novel bugs in the system.

It's a real strength of yours.

The Approved Patient Nutrition fridge has a Futurama Fry magnet. "Man, all this prolonged exposure to radiation is making me thirsty."

Excellent.

[azurelunatic]

It's pretty quick! I'm booked for 15 minutes in the room, including setup/quick scans on the same machine. I'm still thinking about audiobooks but it's not super super tedious.

I like finding the weird problems. Sometimes.