Do You Have Anything in a Red?

As I come down the home stretch with my radiation treatments, the repetitiveness of the daily process leads me to look for less obvious items of interest. The one I'm particularly amused by these days is the ongoing change of colors used to mark my arm for proper alignment during treatment. These "registration marks" help the technicians to place my arm in exactly the same position repeatably, which is fairly crucial to getting a good result. To that end, when I had my fitting for my mold, the technicians spent a great deal of time making sure all the little details were taken care of, tweaking my position, cradling the mold while the foam inside set to the proper consistency, and taking CT scans to assure all was perfect. This procedure cost over $3000 (at least that's what the bill said - my portion came to a tad over $55, thankfully). They then marked my arm with (supposedly) permanent marker, which they covered with small, clear, plastic adhesive patches, so that when I had my simulation 9 days later the technicians would have no problem getting me in the same position. The color used that day was purple.

Within 4 days, the plastic patches began to "wiggle", as I've taken to calling it. From normal bodily movements and the usual wear and tear (like showering or high heat and humidity), the adhesive begins to get degraded, and the patches start to pucker up, which, of course, moves the position of the lines. In my case, 2 of the patches were in extreme danger of falling off completely the day before I was to take a 4 day trip. The fine folks at Greenspring re-patched me, but when I came in for my simulation on May 8, they began to relabel me - sort of a fine tuning of the previous marks.

Obviously out of purple markers, they redid a couple of my marks in black. Perhaps they were trying to simulate linear bruises, or they were ardent Ravens fans; whatever the reason, the results were two-toned. Over the course of my next 3 plus weeks of treatment, every one of the marks has had to be redrawn or touched up. At first there was consistency, with the purple marks morphing to black, so that about 10 days ago my marks were uniformly black. However, during the last ten days, the color choice has changed again, to turquoise this time. And the lines they've drawn are freehand and longer than before, so that an inch or so of extra turquoise shows beyond the patch-covered areas in some places. Fortunately, what is permanent on paper turns out to be extremely impermanent on my skin. Just part of the fun of the process. I have to say that I am in no way criticizing the performance of the technicians - we joke about the colors and they have not compromised my treatment at all. According to my doctor the setup and results are just fine. I think I might even miss these little marks when I finish my treatment cycle, which is soon (just 8 more radiation visits to reach my 25). But I'll see if I can squeeze in another color or two before I'm done.