Radiation

The Varian Linear Accelerator http://www.varian.com/us/ is a truly amazing machine. It's name is HAL and not only can destroy a tumor in only 6 weeks, but it makes a darn good double frappachino mocha late (non fat, dairy free of course) . I half expect Jill to be beamed to the Starship Enterprise after the treatment. Radiation has come a long way in the past few years with the most important inprovements in the imaging guidance and the ability to pinpoint the treatment within 1 milimeter (that's 0.03937 of an inch for those of you not familiar with the metric system). If I was a radiation oncologist I could do a much better job at explianing this, but what I'm trying to say is that its really really neat stuff.
The treatment starts with Jill parking in the front row of the Mayo Clinic with her special "I'm a Radiation Rock Star" parking permit and getting checked in with Grace who is the second sweetest lady ever (our mothers take the top spot) . Then we go to the waiting area and discuss the art work on the walls and cheer on those patients who just received their last treatment. Then the radiation techs come and bring Jill back to HAL where she puts on the Waffle Face Mask which leaves a waffle pattern on Jill's cheeks and forehead. The Waffle Face Mask is fastened to the table to ensure that her head is in the exact same place every single time, otherwise you'll end up like President Skroob from Spaceballs when he got beamed (you'll have to rent it cause I couldn't find it on youtube). After all adjustments are made they throw on some tunes for Jill (Van Morrison) and go into the control room. She gets 9 treatments with HAL moving to a different angle each time. During the treatment Jill is meditating and flushing the tumor out of her body. The entire treatment cycle takes about 10 minutes. The longest part is getting everything set up. After that we say good bye to Gloria and I head off to work and Jill heads home for a nap and a bike trainer ride.