Ah, those pesky school routines!

Remember when you were in gym class, back in seventh grade, and you went through warm up exercises, circling your arms, squatting, push-in up...Well, if you continued to do them, all your life, you'd have a fit body, including your arms, and your torso, and your belly. Those were my thoughts when I walked in my simulation visit for future radiation treatments and was asked unusual questions.

Do you have trouble putting your arms over your head?  No.
Do you have trouble climbing on the platform? No.
Do you have trouble lying down and still for fifteen minutes? No

Easy questions.

Not so easy when the execution started. On my back, with my arms over my head, with my feet tied down, with my head tilted just so, the technician worked for forty minutes molding a custom-made body armor that was to keep me in place during radiation treatments. Forty minutes later, I was in so much pain, that I thought my body was giving up for good before it even received the first session of real treatment.

I had failed in a profound way. Who knew that putting dishes away above my head twice a week when my turn came up to empty the dishwasher had not been enough to keep my arms in shape? And my neck? Heck, I only look at myself in the best of light in my house, avoiding long mirrors whenever possible. For the real event, the radiation, I would need to be half naked, a la Marilyn Monroe, part of the time, while the machine adjusted its beams in very precise ways for very precise timing. My breasts, my underarms and part of my torso were covered with a thin cotton pillow case and were not aided by push-up- bras or pretty corsets.

No. I did this all to myself, by laughing at those routines and ignoring the laws of gravity for decades.
I felt bad for the staff, who had to position me this way and that, an inch from the waist up, two from the hips down, moving me just so to align those majestic rays to do their precise work of killing some precise nodules hiding behind my not so precise skin.

The first treatment hit me like hot sand on a cool beach. Not literally. I left the radiation room and the only thoughts I had: I should have practiced those not so stupid routines all these decades. I should have listened to those teachers.