We’re sitting in a room full of computers. Their monitors show windows full of numbers and graphs. Women in white sit at some of the keyboards. Others stand around talking quietly to each other. There’s a large, cheerful man with us, and a woman in jeans and a shirt. Our attention, though, is focused not on the computers or their operators, but on the CCTV monitor on the wall. It shows a view of a clean, white chamber in which a man is secured to a bed by a framework of metal. The frame is dominated, though, not by the man but by a machine. Immediately behind the bed is a vertical turntable to the perimeter of which is attached a large biege box from which protrudes a slender silver cylinder. The box is a linear accelerator and the cylinder a collimator. It is about to fire high energy x-rays through the man’s head. It looks for all the world like some fiendish trap and I raise a smile by quoting Goldfinger. My sister asks where they keep the pool of piranhas. People chuckle, but I suspect they’ve heard it all before.
While we’ve been watching, the linear accelerator has been carried slowly in an arc around my dad’s head. It’s taken two minutes to reach the zenith, and now it takes another two minutes to return to rest pointing horizontally. Several of the technicians disappear from the control room and a few moments later we see them on the display, rotating the bed about a vertical axis. They return, check some settings and the linac begins to traverse another arc. Then the bed is moved once more, and the linac rotates again. Finally, the doses have all been administered and we all go into the treatment room (all but my sister; I think she finds the machinery a little unsettling). By now my dad has been laying on his back for twenty minutes with his head held motionless by a frame that attaches to his upper jaw. The technicians rush to release him and he sits up and wipes away saliva with a tissue. He swallows a few times and then walks back to the waiting area. The radiologist tells us that he expects no side-effects, and that the treatment is so effective that they have never had to repeat it. They’re going to keep him in hospital overnight as a precaution though. We thank everyone involved.
I linger in the treatment room for a few minutes, and after the others leave, a nurse gives me my dad’s dental impression as a memento.
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You got to keep the dental impression? Cool. When i go to the doctor's I never get to keep anything so I think I'm going to start stealing medical supplies when my doc is out of the room- hypos, vacuum tubes, rolls of gauze, that sort of thing.
For all you little creatures out there that like medical stuff and weird ass....morbid....stuff.... check out the mutter museum of philadelphia:
http://www.morbidfactdujour.com/sightseer/us/pa/mutter.htm
Or why not check out creepy ass institute- the GLORE psychiatric hospital museum...
http://www.morbidfactdujour.com/sightseer/us/mo/glore/index.html
Remember... if you're not seeing weird stuff, you're not ALIVE!