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| The Crying of Lot 107081 |
I'm four days clear of my last radiation treatment and I'm feeling great both physically and mentally. I wasn't quite sure how it was going to be emerging from the basement at UCSF after radiation session number thirty but I felt instantly revived and awakened. I left with my mask as a party favor in a grocery bag and it felt like a feather rather than a prison as I carried it home with me. A friend had suggested to me before I began that most patients either want to transform their mask into a piece of art or back over it with their car. I initially identified with the latter group but now that's not the case. I don't want to destroy and I don't want to transform it. It stands for itself.
I figure with the initial fitting, the treatments and scans, and the occasional delays, I probably spent in the neighborhood of fourteen hours locked into this thing. When I look at it now I think of perseverance rather than misery, patience rather than suffering, and hope rather than fear.
