I made it through Radiation Therapy without too much problem.
Yes, I got tired, terribly, deeply, bone-deep tired, but after six weeks that
was gone. My skin turned red, as if with sunburn, but that faded, and it never
became worse than that. Some women have a lot of blisters and sores from the
treatment, but not smoking and not getting suntans all my life paid off. There
was one small spot, however, that turned redder and took longer to recover, and
I recognized that it was the area where I had been badly sunburned, multiple
times, in my early teenage years. Thirty-five years had passed, but still, that
spot was more susceptible than the areas that had been covered by my swimsuit.
Still, by not having previously damaged skin, for the most part, I could recover
a lot faster and lot easier with little permanent damage.
The same, unfortunately, could not be said for Barbie.
I took her with me to illustrate the Cyberknife, which is an
improvement on the One-eyed monster. With a much narrower beam, the Cyberknife
can deliver radiation with surgical precision, and thus can also deliver higher
doses that affect just the tumor. Greater flexibility of the head, with six
degrees of movement, means that it can also follow the irregular outlines of
the tumor, and can hit the same area of the tumor multiple times in one session
while passing through different overlying tissues. The Cyberknife can be used
as an alternative to surgery in certain cases, by shrinking and sometimes
completely destroying tumors in situ.
Barbie seemed to tolerate her treatment. When I got her home,
however, and moved her legs, I heard an unusual crack. Then her legs hung
oddly. So I had to take off her dress to see what was going on, and her panties
– and found them melted to her crotch. When I pulled the material away, gently,
her legs fell off.
Barbie's crotch was broken.
I've had that Barbie for over forty years, and didn't want to
just throw her away, so I collected all the bits and tried to put her back
together with superglue. Which is a lot trickier than it sounds. Holding Barbie
upside down, I balanced her leg assembly in her hips, then put the glue on the
pieces. And then held it all together for the required sixty seconds. Pulling
my fingers away too early -- which I did more than once -- meant that the whole
process had to be repeated. Again and again I tried. Finally I succeeded, and
Barbie was more or less fixed -- and all I had to do was keep her in that
upside down position for another 24 hours while the glue cured.
I realized that I should have thought about that before I
started.
So, holding Barbie in one hand, I hunted through the house for
something that would hold her in the right position. A vase? A glass jar, a --
ahah!
