Actual TMI on TBI

I guess I got a lil inspired by breezy's post so here is an adapted version of what I wrote up in my journal:

The TBI was different than I thought. I stand what looks like a modified standing closet from ikea. They put a towel beneath my feet. A large bicycle seat goes between my legs. But I only sit on it 5% of the time when its inbetween the 3-minute beam segments. In front of me goes a hard plastic board with two tin and candium blocks to protect my lungs. They didn’t cover my whole lungs so I said “a little small aren’t they” and the nurse responded “There about twice as big as most peoples,” And then she explained that “we still want some radiation to get to the lungs, so just trying to block out some” and I’m standing there thinking. “I don’t think a leukemic cell is hiding in my lungs, could we go with full blocks please.”  They also make you take off underwear and socks, and I asked why socks, cause it seems like nbd if my feet get a miniscual amount less radiation. They explained that it was for my sake, the elastic in socks and underwear bands cause redness and irritation. In its place, I wore a gown open in the front (for the diodes) and and scrub pants during the treatment. They also put some more x-ray diffusers on the screen to the xray machine. These were blocking some radiation that would otherwise go beneath my knees and above my neck. They said that different body parts don’t need as much radiation. They also attached 4 radiation diodes to different body parts (different in the afternoon) to capture how many were going to different areas. The whole situation just felt less technical than I thought it would be. I suppose with the diodes they could correct if one area wasn’t getting as much as it needed. After 3 beams (3 min each), I do a 180. They come in and set it up for the back. Then I get back into position:I have to scoot over the seat—which is hard bc scrubs the crotch is so low I can’t get it over the seat—and stand up arms on the handles (I kept forgetting that). They take an xray to make sure that blocks are in right position and then if no adjustments are needed, we go into 3 more beams. The way they enter and exit is through a blast door that looks straight from a rebel cruiser. White, opens slowly, looks heavy-duty. Against the wall for the back-facing, they have a blown-up Where’s Waldo? Poster from the trojan horse movie set. I haven’t seen a wheres waldo in years, it was nostalgic. I forgot the premise is that he is walking around a movie set. In the morning I tried to find waldo for about 2 minutes, but felt dizzy, the zoom was too low. My vision wasn’t quite good enough, so I just wandered around the scene and looked at the trojan shields mostly. Then in the pm, I asked if they have more of these to switch out, cause I was curious. Theb nurse responded “Why did you find waldo already?” I felt like a biscuit and got to looking. It really made the time fly for the next 3 beam segments. I didn’t even sit down between one and two, well actually I asked them to crank the music so by then I couldn’t really tell if the intercom was in the song or was them. And I didn’t realize it was them until “ok, starting up again.”  I still couldn’t find waldo. Which surprised me. I had time to scan every group of people in that poster, yet, he still aluded me. Turns out not too hard to find the waldo page on reddit. But I'll save my search for tomorrow. Maybe you'd like to take a gander?