Last day of Radiotherapy

Beeper: ENTER THE CONSULTING ROOM

Well done!

Dr Samuelson: Session 32. Your last day. How do you feel?

Paul: Not too bad. Bit weak each day after treatment.

Dr Samuelson: Understandable. Radiotherapy is a bit fatiguing, especially towards the end.

Paul: The nurses gave me a graduation certificate.

Dr Samuelson: Let me see? Oh, that’s nice. Lots of pink stamps.

___________

Voice-over

 

Graduation Certificate issued today. Roughly translated it says something like: “Patient has completed 32 take offs and landings on LINAC the Cyclotron. He is now cleared to ride his electric bicycle (with trainer wheels).”

LINAC and the Iron Lung

The treatment has a pattern...

Analog treatment

Paul: I wake in the morning perky as a box of birds. Work the morning until 11 then hop on the e-bike with a Heigh Ho Silver to the hospital. After the treatment and into the evening, I feel a bit as if my brain has been hacked.

Dr Samuelson: A zombie?

Paul: Not that bad. The drop in chirpiness comes after being loaded into the LINAC. Reminds me of those iron lungs used in the 1950s.

Dr Samuelson: But your head is inside the LINAC isn’t it, while the head is outside the iron lung?

Paul: I didn’t mean it is an iron lung, just that it reminded me of one.

Digital treatment

Dr Samuelson: An iron lung is a mechanical respirator. A LINAC is pumping X-rays into you.

Paul. Granted. And a patient spent weeks or even years in
an iron lung and only spends minutes in a LINAC.

____________

Voice-over

Quite different technologies. Analog vs digital.

Radiation Room Questions

Questions to deflect anxieties…

Patient: Is this a linear accelerator plus MRI?

Radiation Therapist: Linear accelerator plus CT scanner.

Patient: Is it new?

Radiation Therapist: Two years old.

Patient: Expensive?

Radiation Therapist: Very.

Emerging after ten minutes in the tunnel…

Patient: I heard something go round and round. 29 times.

Radiation Therapist: That was the gantry revolving around you, delivering the beam.

Patient: Same again tomorrow?

Radiation Therapist: You have 32 sessions.

________

Voice-over

 

Intimidating sounding names. Cyclotron. Synchrocylotron. Linear Accelerator or LINAC. For accelerating particles, magnetically directed to a target, in this case, a human body. The operators are the radiation therapist (放射線療法士) and the dosimetrist (線量測定士).