This is me this morning, before I went for the first of my last five treatments.

If you look carefully on the front, you can see an inward jag of about 3mm in the vertical red line down the middle of my neck. That’s actually representative of the actual shape of the aperture; they put in an extra slice of lead shielding there to try and reduce the dose my windpipe gets. As you can also see, it’s not square at the bottom left (as you look at it) corner; again, they put in shielding there to try and avoid irradiating the top of my lung too much.

The lighting’s not brilliant, but you can just about see that the treatment area comes up on my jawline. Again, perhaps because of the shield, the edge of that area along my jaw is redder than the part immediately inside it.

More of the hair seems to have fallen out adjacent to the treatment site, leaving a white border – I’m not sure why that is. Maybe it’s getting a partial dose due to beam diffraction – enough to kill the hair over time, but not enough to turn the skin red.

The general condition of my skin has started to go downhill; the nurses tell me to expect it to break down and crack this week, behind the ear or in the crease in my neck, or both. The effects continue for a few weeks after the treatment itself ends (this coming Friday) so I’ll keep posting pictures to document that.

I’m still not suffering from any tiredness or nausea, praise God, and the sore throat hasn’t returned.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. — Romans 8:28