I got to see Dad’s radiation therapy setup Monday (day before yesterday) and went with him to chemo yesterday, and of course I took (more than) a few pictures. This is a mask they made that literally pins his head, neck, and top of his chest to the bed/table while the radiation machine does it’s thing. The red crosses are alignment marks, and the black outline along the neck and jaw are where the radiation is actually being delivered.
They used to make all those marks (the red crosses and the black outlines) directly on the patient’s body, and you had to keep them through the treatment (7 weeks in my dad’s case). Now they build masks or molds and put the marks there, which would seem to be an improvement :-).
If you blow it up you’ll see that there’s quite a lot of noise. It wasn’t terribly bright in there, and I was imposing a bit before the next patient, so I was in a bit of a hurry. Such is life…
I’ve got some other shots uploaded to Flickr, including shots of the radiation machine itself where Dad’s mask looks like a white C3PO :-).
Huge thanks to the nurses that gave him this level of access and patiently answered all my questions.
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