I completed my first round of radiation yesterday. The first of thirty-seven that will carry on until early March. It was a breeze and I anticipate nothing more inconvenient than trying to have my bladder sufficiently full to help target the area receiving the dose. My bladder has been a pain in the ass for the last few years, so why should this be any different.

CT Scans and MRI’s are unfortunately no longer a new experience for me and as I’ve learned, there is not much too them. As I laid down in my form fitted mold, and entered the tube for an initial photograph, my eyes were drawn the the drop ceiling tile directly above my line of vision. There was a cut-out, approximately six by six inches in the tile, with a red laser light scored across its axis. It was in the shape of a plus sign, but depending on my position in the tube, the perspective change would make it appear more as a cross which I found comforting. It appears that the opening is there to allow a camera to keep an electronic eye on you. The radiation tech said that there were three cameras in the room as well as a microphone to monitor my situation, while they were safely enclosed in a separate room away from the x-rays bouncing off the walls and through my gut. Suffice to say, under the circumstances and on your first day of a long slog ahead, one can feel a bit of mortality creeping into one’s thoughts. Not much else to do while laying still for ten minutes but to think and pray for success.

I was already down with the mortality thoughts and really didn’t require any more prodding or prompts to drive the situation home. Which brings me to the soundtrack of this little episode. From past experience with MRI, I remember being asked if there were any particular music I wanted to listen to while in the chamber. I don’t recall my reply but I may have likely asked for Rush. Something epic and lengthy, like Xanadu or By-Tor And The Snow Dog. 2112 would be too much because I’d be air-drumming instead of lying still and end up tossing a monkey wrench into the works. No, I didn’t get asked this time, the music just played as my treatment began and I know this sounds made up, but I swear to you it is the Gospel truth.

To kick off my abbreviated jam session came a little ditty you all know called, “The Sounds of Silence”. “Hello darkness my old friend…” Really? This is what you’ve cued up for me?
“Silence likes a cancer grows…” Are you friggin’ messing with me, right now?
Old Artie and Paul seemed to be laying it on extra thick as I lied there thinking, “You know what the sound of silence conjures up for me? A tomb, a six-foot hole in the ground, an eternal dirt nap.”
Do better people!

Next up was The Beatles, Well that’s okay, The Beatles’ music has brought me great comfort in trying times for as long as I can remember. What have your got for me? Bring it!
“Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away…” I kid you not.
I’ve known every lyric to the song since I was fifteen years old and while I understand that it is about the heartbreak of a broken relationship, the only line that kept ringing in my ears was, “there’s a shadow hanging over me… there’s a shadow hanging over me… there’s a shadow hanging over me…”
At this point I fully expected the next tune to be Terry Jacks weeping all namby-pamby through “Seasons in the Sun”. At least at that point I’d have known that the staff were punking me.

However, the next song mercifully wasn’t from that mop-topped, lachrymose, fatalist, Terry Jacks. It was just the opposite and I was relieved to hear the, upbeat, downbeat of that syncopated guitar slinger, Bo Diddley. What a relief to pivot from the tomb gloom to the cocksure, confidence of “Hey, Bo Diddley”.

Saw my baby run across the field
slippin’ and slidin’ like an automobile
Hollerin’, my baby, got towed away
Slipped on from me like a Cadillac 8

Now this is more like it, although it presents an entirely new problem. How is a body to lie still with Bo Diddley’s signature; Chung, chunga, chunga, chunga, chunk, chunk, skeert, blaring in your head? That is an almost impossible assignment of self-disciple! The machine finally spit me out after chewing on me for a bit and as I closed up my gown, I wanted to lay some serious side-eye on my two techs, but I decided to play the part of the compliant patient instead. After all, I have six more weeks to go with these folks. Better to save my grievances until the end. But I’ll tell you this much, if this continues, when it’s all said and done and some pollyanna, do-gooder asks me to ring a bell, the bell I choose to ring might just be that of the radiology staff, resident dee-jay.

(Incidentally, today my playlist included The Cure, The Police and The Cars. Maybe they checked my birth date.)