Masks

In life we wear many different masks.  As children we wear various Halloween masks—I was mostly a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, though once I went as Garfield and twice as a vampire, no mask required.  As adults our masks become emotional:  we feign being happy, healthy, or satisfied when we are anything but.  We pretend to be excited or overjoyed for others’ success when in reality we are dying inside:  resentful, jealous, or even bitter that we are not experiencing the same thing.  But I am here today to tell you about a different kind of mask, one that is very much real and physical.  It is a white, plastic mesh mask that I wore to receive twenty-nine radiation treatments into my brain.

The mask was placed onto my face as a warm piece of plastic, which the therapists then molded into shape.  Each morning before going into the machine to receive treatment, I would lie flat atop a table and have the mask locked down so that my head was unable to move.  This act, while not necessarily comfortable, was essential to my treatment; it made sure that the radiation was delivered to the precise spot necessary each and every time in order to destroy any microscopic cancer cells that might have remained after the removal of my brain tumor.  For the first few weeks I would receive a scan prior to the four-minute treatment.  For the last few weeks, as I began to respond to the treatments, my scans were cut down to two per week.  But for the final six treatments, the radiation was delivered in more accurate six-minute doses.

The radiation, much like the mask, causes some irritation and discomfort, but you understand going in that the process is for your benefit.  And considering that I, in my perpetually-anxious state, didn’t expect to survive the craniotomy, well, everything else since October 13 has felt like a gift, a blessing, and a second chance at life.