Whisker soup and other adventures of a radiotherapist

Just been to the 'dress rehearsal' for my radiotherapy treatment. The session was to mark out exactly where they're pointing their laser beams next week.

I'll begin by describing the machinery involved. The contraption includes a horizontal bench, which the patient lies on, a semi-circular arm (imagine a backwards letter 'c'), and box mounted on the arm which contains all the laser beams. The arm can be moved in pretty much any direction. The bench can also be rotated. This was part of today's adventure: to get all this gadgetry in the right position.

The second part was to mark out the mask in various ways to make sure they're targeting the right bit of my head. The mask as I've explained before is a thin plastic mesh that covers the whole face, with a little hole for your nose so you can breathe. You can not see, nor can you talk. It was, therefore, difficult to comprehend exactly what was going on.

There were at least two women in the room. Both of smelt of anti-bacterial gel, and talked in numbers. They hovered around my head sticking sticky things to the mask and scribbling on it. For all I know they were gold stars and glitter and they'd written the word 'twat' across my forehead. Although I guess it's more likely they were marking out where my head needs to be for the treatment.

The term 'whisker soup' also came up a lot, and it came in this context: "We're going to need whisker soup on this side." Unless they were discussing lunch and radiotherapists have predilection for some kind of feline delicacy, I'm guessing it's a radiotherapy term. I realise now I should've asked, but they'll be plenty of time for that later.

Other than a bright light going on and off, and whirring of machinery, that's about it. The whole thing didn't take anymore than 20 minutes. The actual treatment sessions shouldn't be any longer. They begin on Tuesday and will last six glorious weeks.

I have an appointment with the surgeon tomorrow, just to see how I'm getting on. Will let you know how that goes.

J