Hi Dan,
Oh this brings back memories of my not-so-distant past! You can't beat a well educated nurse - they really run things. 95% of my interface with the medical establishment was through the "advice nurse". I hope that you are taping the advice or have someone with you who is a superior note taker. It's really easy to miss important points while you are the patient and your mind is racing.

Typically a "boost" is when they give you the entire 7,000 rads instead of 5,000. It's still a fractional dose rate of 200 or so rads a day. They just extend the treatment. Your treatment is pretty fast - I was on the table for 35 minutes a day for 33 days. Longer for the once a week x-rays to verify alignment. Look to get a CT at about 3 weeks also. They may even tweak the program a little bit at that point, but you probably won't notice much difference. As you lose weight the mask will loosen up a little and that's a good thing. It left an imprint that looked like scales on a fish (or the creature from the blue lagoon ;-)

Surprisingly, the radiation oncologist has given me the most invasive exams of any of them with the exception of the latest exam by the head and neck surgeon where "visualization" was called out on an MRI by the radiologist.

Don't forget -no creams until AFTER your treatment. You want your neck clean and dry for treatment to prevent a bolus effect to the skin. You probably won't need it right away anyway. And also remember DO NOT SCRATCH - if it gets really itchy, they can prescibe a steroidal cream that works pretty good for those itchy moments. The last thing you want to do is exacerbate skin damage.

One day at a time...