Radio Days (7): Breakdown

Don’t worry it’s the machine not me. Mrs Preen and I walk into St Thom’s at 8.30 sharp for my Treatment Review and it’s clear something is up. Apparently, when the first radiographer arrived at 7.30 to crank up the Tomotherapy do-dat, the machine was having no part of it and refused to be cranked. More of this in a moment.

My Treatment Review is with Maggie whose beat is normally at Guy’s Cancer Centre, but she is filling in for Jenna who assiduous readers will recall from Radio Days (1).

As mentioned last time, this is not to see if the treatment is working but to check how I’m doing and whether I’m experiencing debilitating side effects. I tell her, I’m fine but do have to get up to go to the loo a couple of times a night and no longer pee with the intensity of Niagara Falls. But hey if this is what it takes to eject the Unwelcome Guest, then call me satisfied. Maggie is content with my progress, so Mrs Preen and I amble back to the waiting room to discover there’s going to be a lot of it, waiting that is.

With the Tomotherapy machine on the blink, we sit expectantly for the engineer to arrive from Guy’s to jack it up and give the thing a new set of points and plugs. News starts to filter through: The engineer is on his way (hurray!), but he’s stuck in traffic (Nooo!) and then I see a bloke who might be the engineer, though to be fair he looks more like an electrician. Are you the engineer? I ask, no I’m an electrician he says and shows me his mulitmeter.

I turn to Orla, a chatty Irish colleen and ace radiographer, who explains the RT machine detests being powered down completely, but a mains outage has done just that. The machine is furious and will not tolerate being treated in this cavalier manner. Questions circulate: Has the electrician got his little pack of fuse wire with him? Has anyone used fuse wire since the 1970s? So many questions but still no engineer.

We hear a faint rumbling noise: Power is restored! But the machine is still in a strop. Bits of equipment are trundled by and then suddenly a man with a laptop computer appears. It’s the engineer, he is amongst us. Tenderly, he brings the machine’s system back up, it is placated and consents to start lasering the waiting patients, who have been waiting patiently. Finally it’s my turn, I’m irradiated fit to bust and I’m on my way out at just after one o’clock. This is the first road block in an otherwise seamless treatment schedule. And now I get the weekend off and maybe a couple of glasses of wine to boot. Life is sweet.