Radiation Revisited, Or the Woman in the Iron Mask

OK, it's really a plastic mask but oh, how form fitting. As I was cooling my heels on some CT-scanning-type contraption, the technician advised me my face would be feeling hot, and then cold. A slab of blue plastic melted, lava-like, over my features and quickly cooled to comfortable temperatures. Eye holes, a nose hole, a mouth hole, but imagine Darth Vader in baby-blue, with illegible graffiti and tic tac toe games decorating his cheeks and forehead, for the technicians busily drew black and green lines--that dizzying, permanent-marker smell dominated the air for a few moments, and then I was done. 

For my first radiation, yesterday, I donned the mask--or rather, it was slipped over my face. I'd already asked if I could keep it when I was done--it's a real conversation piece, goes with my wig and styrofoam wig head from my chemo days. 

"That's snug," I said. "Gee, that's tight," I thought. That was before they buckled the mask to the table and taped it down, such that my chin retracted into my neck. I could still breath, but believe me, my eyes were bugging.

Darth Vader or Silence of the Lambs?

"Are you lying comfortably?" asked the anxiously sweet technician with the long gray hair and the gold granny glasses.

I burst out laughing, only I couldn't burst. A strangled sound emerged from my mouth hole. Then I pretended to breathe like Darth Vader and they got nervous. 

"I'm Darth Vader!" I announced. They smiled, urged me not to move--another line that got me laughing--and left the rooms so I could be irradiated.