Ed

Good for you for getting the mouth hole in the mask. It does not affect the mask's function of holding you in place for the radiation. Heads up that there may be temporary "waffle" marks on your face after they unbolt your mask. (They used actual bolts into the lead table for mine). Think of it as just one less thing to worry about since as Maria noted, it's important to keep your head still and in place for the treatment.

As for Chemo, I brought both an MP3 player and good books. I was not interested in watching the daytime crap on TV, although I could hear the shrieks after the DNA paternity tests on Maury Povitch from the other TVs. The Benadryl never made me sleepy enough to nap plus even if I had the beeping from the pump whenever a bag of saline or potassium emptied would have woken me up. My advice is to have someone come with you if possible. Even at my CCC, the staffing ratio is such that you are not constantly attended and little things like the beeping or getting up and dragging everything including the chemo pump and pole and bags into the bathroom are up to you to fix. I would have had to wear Depends if my wife did not come to chemo with me and one poor guy a few chairs down from me who was alone ended up pissing himself. The poor nurses do their very best but the hospitals overload them. My nurse had to check the chemo orders, call in the orders to the pharmacy, pick up the chemo, heat up the towels , hook up the IV, load up the saline, administer the Benadryl, start the potassium drip, take our lunch orders, check the chemo flow for 5 patients concurrently and still distribute our lunches. She could not abandon another patient in midstream to focus solely on me. With the exception of that one poor guy, every chemo patient had a caregiver to help out and they made it clear that was their expectation.

Charm