pastpresentfuture

thoughts from the treatment room

The room around me is dim. I am lying swaddled in warm white blankets on a narrow bench. I stare up from where my head is bolted down by a custom-molded, plastic mesh mask that is slightly crushing my nose. There is a fake, glowing window in the ceiling—round and cloud-filled, with redbud, cherry blossom, and walnut branches peeking in from the sides. Behind me, an enormous white mechanical arm—probably the most high-tech machine I’ve ever laid eyes on—is preparing to begin my treatment.

Throughout this whole process, I have been struck by the incongruity between how futuristic this technology is while existing in spaces that feel so common, mundane even. This is not a critique of anything, just an observation as someone who mostly writes fiction that takes place in the future. This is the future I am living in, whether I’m fully aware of it or not. It’s all right here, with it’s scuffed floors and aging composite tile ceilings. It’s in the waiting room while I’m staring at a slick pocket-sized computer hovering over an age-old backdrop of worn blue jeans. None of this could have happened quite the same way for me the last time around. Yet the trappings look much the same as they did 28 years ago. This is not how I would have pictured 2024 way back then. Reality is the future and the past all mixed up together.

The slow mechanical arm begins it’s approach. As the “head” of the machine arcs slowly over my face, staring at me from inches away with it’s leady, aperture-shaped “eye”, my lips purse and I fight the urge to laugh.

“Hello, friend,” I want to say, as it studies me a moment then sends radiation beaming into my brain with a gentle click.

I am cursed by the tenancy to anthropomorphize what I perceive as “cute” machines. Too many robot buddy movies from my childhood are clearly to blame. Our printer/copier at work comes to life sometimes when I walk up to it holding my laptop—like a dog hopping up to greet you when you enter the room.

“Good morning, BizHub,” I say to it—referring to it’s model name on our Wifi—hoping to start our antagonistic relationship off on a good note for the day. “Good morning, Tamara,” I reply for it, in a nasally robot voice. Despite the fact that I know better, if we ever achieve the Singularity I think I may be doomed.

My new marshmallow-esque friend makes minor adjustments to it’s position as I try and lay completely still. BEEP. The cameras are checking to make sure my head is still aligned. CLICK. The smell of ozone and my triggered olfactory nerves fills my head. It’s kind of gross and mucusy, but it only lasts a moment or two. Otherwise, I feel nothing.

The first time my pituitary gland grew itself a roommate I was seventeen. I was taking pictures for my portfolio to apply to art school with an old SLR camera and noticed the vision in my left eye was blurry. Turns out there was a benign tumor the size of a shelled walnut pressing on my optic nerve. Standard procedure back then was to enter my skull through my nose, remove the tumor, and hope for the best. I was completely terrified, of course—beside myself, even. I could lose my eyesight, get brain damage. I could die. Being only seventeen, I hadn’t truly considered my own mortality up until that point.

Luckily I lived only 30 minutes away from the hospital where the top surgeon for this condition practiced. At the time, at least, I was the youngest adenoma patient he had ever seen or operated on. Normally these mostly benign, slow-growing tumors reveal themselves when people are over 40, and even though I did not learn that fact until recently, I always wondered if maybe mine would start to grow back. It came out of nowhere once before, right? Why wouldn’t it happen again? Despite being the fourth most common type of brain tumor, they still don’t know what triggers them.

I considered asking about having it checked on many times over the years, despite no one urging me to do so. Decades of follow-ups are standard procedure now, but weren’t in the 1990’s apparently. Though, with health insurance being what it is in this country, I couldn’t really afford the cost of an MRI—or any of what might come after—until recently, when I started experiencing weird sensations in my face and head and was referred to a neurologist. If I had been able to get the preventive care I needed and caught the regrowth earlier, I may have avoided surgery. People wonder why we spend so much more on healthcare in this country? This is a big part of why.

My second surgery is now months behind me—an ordeal that went pretty smoothly thanks to the amazing doctors, technicians, and nurses who took care of me. But, because of the web of delicate vessels, nerves, and what-not in that part of the head, the surgeon had to leave a tiny bit of tumor behind that was too dangerous to risk removing. This is what the radiation is for—to kill off what’s left. This time we want to make sure it won’t come back.

They offered to put on music for me during my radiation treatments, but I like listening to the hum and click of the machine, the motors whirring, the creak and slap as the arm’s joints seem to stretch to their limit. It’s the same with the chaotically rhythmic buzz and thump of an MRI machine that reminds me of the noise/electronic bands I used to go to see in the late 90’s. I may be laying still, but in my head I flail and dance. Like some kind of metaphor for my life at middle age, I always have to struggle to keep myself from laughing.

After my final treatment is over, I head down the short labyrinth of nondescript, beige hallways and come up behind one of the technicians I met earlier. She’s rolling a plastic cart piled with a dozen of the sci-fi looking white-mesh masks, perfectly fitted to other patients’ faces, and I’m hit by another one of those moments of futuristic vs. mundane that makes me smile.

When I was having my mask made one of the technicians saw me eyeing it as it was drying and let me know I could keep it if I wanted. Um, yes. Now, after seeing the cart, I want to ask if they’d give me a bunch of them to make a sculpture out of, since many people don’t take theirs home. On the slim chance they say yes, I don’t know how I’ll get them all home or where I’ll put them, so I decide to let it go.

So, with just my own mask in my hand, I leave Radiation Oncology, hoping I’m near the end of this journey. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with my fake, plastic visage, but my real head has never felt so precious. The future is suddenly so immediate, so now—all mashed up and tangled in remnants of the past that led me here. The time I have been waiting for has arrived. My pulse quickens with nervous energy as the glass doors slide open and I am free.