Amen to that Kevin!
Only one problem, your to sick to care by that point!
Amy

David I should have known that I have the collectors series in my "B" sci-fi movie collection.

I think the Blue Lagoon movie was with Brook Shields...

I just layed there and let my imagination do stories I would make up as I waited. I should have wrote some down. I had some interesting tales going thru this empty sphere they call a head. LOL

Chris,

Well my wife read this to me while I resting on the couch and sure enough she got me up. During the initial mask fitting they ran the machine through several cycles , calibrating I guess, which took an eternity. Finally on the third try they got what they needed but then the machines software couldn't communicate with the hardware. After they messed around for awhile they decided they had to shut down and reboot, should have had a Mac, and this corrected the problem. Meanwhile I went from calm to panic, it must have been 30 minutes complete isolation, and I started flailing my arms around. They came in and the human contact calmed me down. I was a freaking mess. I was able to complete the procedure but barely.

Good news, they will cut the eyes out of the mask for you so you can look around which is better than having a plastic sheet over your head. I made my own music disc so I can have familiar music during treatment.

I told my doctor afterwords that nowhere in this world is there a treatment that incorporated the archaic and the arcane more than this machine. It's all state of the art, firing photons and gammas rays and things that few can comprehend, yet they bolt you down to a board with a mask like some type of mid evil torture. It gets easier! Twelve down for me and twenty one to go. Hang in there.

Jeff

You're right about the medieval torture! It's seems bizarrely to be from another time, this mask...but it sounds like you're doing alright with yours now. It seems the fitting is probably the worst of all the sessions you have to endure...so I feel hopeful that the treatments themselves will be comparatively bearable. I will be taking my own music in, for sure. And I do hope for some eye holes.

Good luck with the rest of your treatments! May those photons and gamma rays go straight to where they're needed!

When I had my radiation and mask, and was bolted down when I went through the machine (20 minutes), I closed my eyes tightly and never openened them, even to peek, the entire time. I then put my mind ELSEWHERE, and hummed songs; mine were usually Christmas carols. When I first started my radiation, I counted while in the machine, but that didn't work. So, try humming a song

a David Sedaris tape! that won't work; you'll be laughing too much!

John once had to be unscrewed from the table b/c he was going to vomit; he sat for about an hour but still felt too nauseated to do the tx so was sent home (which means a tx tacked on the end I guess). This was even w/his nausea meds (zofran, reglan, ativan), but he feels the Ativan helps a bit overall with both nausea and then the anxiety of possibly having another episode like that one, etc. He's joked about putting his mask in the local EPA Superfund site "where it belongs" once he's done with it. A relative of a co-worker had cancer tx involving a mask some years ago, and his wife uses it to hang her earrings now...

Music, meditation, and prayer. Anyone can get through it as it's a step towards getting better. I remember my first treatment, strapped in and placed into the chamber and BAM, I freaked (Even after all the self convincing that it wasn't going to be an issue). They were there and had me out in a split second. A little water and refocus and then it wasn't so bad. I found a little area that I could point one eye towards the corner of the nose area in the mask and I could see some light when I needed to focus. As I lost weight I had to have another mask made so I have two for halloween decor. They look cool under a black light. LOL!! Yes, a sense of humor always helps a lot.
Best Wishes,
Steve