Pink Flamingos

Music isn't the only thing that accompanies me during radiation. There are also pink flamingos, acrobats, Alvin Ailey dancers, colorful beach umbrellas, dancing notes and Jedi knights.

Most of these images come from a book on visualization that a breast cancer survivor sent me. The visualizations are designed for protection and energy during treatment. The treatment under the linear accelerator involves exposing healthy tissue to radiation as well as any cancer cells left behind after surgery, so the author, Wendy Burton, imagines ways of protecting her healthy cells. In one case, an enormous flock of pink flamingos appears when the whirring sound begins:

Their wingspan is triple that of your garden-variety famingo, casting a deep protective shadow across my breast. In addition, these large birds are made of starched silk--I wouldn't want to subject real famingo to radiation. Each healthly cell holds on to an outstretched famingo leg and is shielded from the light. My cancer cells are not visited by flamingos. They, instead, began to vaporize in the intesity of the beam.

She also imagines beautifully colored beach umbrellas that snap open when the machine begins.
Last week when I thought the umbrellas would protect me, the council of Jedi knights arrived instead. I could see Yoda and Samuel L. Jackson and Obi-Wan along with a host of robe-clad Jedi using their light sabers to block the harmful rays from reaching the wrong spots.
Yesterday, notes on a treble clef served as the shields.

The dancers and acrobats move through the ducts to magically and rhythmically usher out of my body any cancer cells. Once the techs leave me alone in the room, these visualizations help me cope with the craziness of bombarding my chest with radiation.