It's Friday morning. The past two days were uncomfortable, but I'm starting to feel better as the last dose of Cisplatin wears off. I met with the radiologist on Wednesday and an intern yesterday. They claim that I'm doing much better than could be expected to this point. Today's radiation treatment is the halfway point. I will have 14 more radiation days starting on Monday. They anticipate that I should do OK next week, but they warned me that the two following weeks of radiation will bring on fatigue, a loss of appetite, and difficulty swallowing. I'm beginning to feel some irritation in my esophagus from the radiation, but its not bad yet.

++++

The radiation machine has a nickname. Trillium. It's the size of a small car and it resides in a room the size of a garage. I walk in each day and climb onto a plastic mold of my back and head. I put my arms back over my head. I'm looking up and resting comfortably in the mold. Large green arms bring disks the size of a car tire within eight inches of my chest. I can the the reflection of my bare chest in the steel disk in front of me. My chest has fine green laser cross hairs marking the target right below my rib cage. It's an assassin's point of view.

Two technicians work to line up my body. "Give me a three millimeter role to the center", says one. My body moves slightly as they tug the sheet under me. The technicians go away. The machine starts to move quietly and smoothly. Precision. Various green arms bring new devices which quietly take pictures. The technicians appear again and move my hips about 1 inch to the left and disappear.

The radiation arm moves into place on the right side of my body and blasts me for about 2 seconds. It moves over my chest and blasts again for about 6 seconds. Then to my right for 3 seconds. Then underneath me and blast up through my back for another 5 seconds. I feel nothing. It's like getting a long xray.

"OK, you can relax your arms", he says from the safety of the control booth. I'm done.

I've seen the images they take. I can see every bone and organ in my torso. I can see the target areas. I can see the tumor. Even though the tumor is small, they are radiating about 3 inches on either side of it. They are also radiating related lymphnodes to be on the safe side. Amazing!