When you have radiation therapy on your head or throat, they
create a clever little mask for you, like so:
You wear it during the (brief) radiation treatment. It keeps
your head in place without twitching, and it’s marked so that the doctors and
nurses can tell where to aim the radiation.
I had the mask made yesterday. The nurses took a sheet
of perforated plastic and heated it in warm water to 150 degrees until it
softened; then they put it over my face and molded it to my features until it
hardened.
Then I heard the word “tattoo” mentioned.
Then, all of a sudden, one of the nurses lunged in and
jabbed me in the middle of my chest with a needle, and made an insignificant
little mark. That’s the tattoo that’ll be used to help them place the mask and
aim the radiation.
All these years I’ve put off getting a tattoo. Now I have
one, and it’s a stupid red dot, right where no one can see it.
Also, regarding the radiology mask: I desperately wanted to
take a picture of it when it was done, but they took it away too quickly. But I
imagine it looked something like this:
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