For Wilshire Baptist Church
As I left radiation treatment for the last time a few weeks ago, they gave me a souvenir from my 35 sessions: the plastic mesh mask I’d worn every weekday morning for seven weeks. Fitting tight as a glove and clamped to a table, the mask held my head motionless while therapists aimed a radiation beam at me with the precision needed to damage the DNA in the nuclei of individual cancer cells without harming healthy cells.
Earlier in the process before that final day, I joked about taking the mask home and maybe using it at Halloween or something like that, but as I walked out of the clinic with it, I wasn’t so sure I really wanted it. It’s intriguing and yet it’s grotesque: the eyes just slits, the mouth frozen in a sort of silent scream like a picture of me on my worst days. There were times when clamped to the table for anywhere from 40 minutes to two hours I almost did scream. Mostly, it’s a relic of a long ordeal I’d rather not repeat.
And yet there are some aspects of it I do need to remember: the kindness and encouragement of the therapists who got me ready every day; the trust and faith I had to place in them as they practiced their life-saving science; the gratitude for family and friends lifting me in prayer; the love of LeAnn going with me every day and receiving me when I came out tired, discouraged or disoriented; and most certainly, the peace and calm I needed for hours at a time that I can only attribute to a God who was in some mysterious and invisible way overseeing it all.
As well, I wonder who I am now that the mask is off? Have I been changed by this experience, or am I the same person I was but with some new stories to tell. I’d like to think I’ve become more grateful, prayerful, caring, tolerant, calm, peaceful, patient and trusting – all traits I needed while wearing the mask. But did those traits become part of who I am – part of my DNA – or did I shed them when I took off the mask? I just don’t know yet.
We all wear masks from time to time. They’re forced on us by circumstances, or we put them on ourselves — sometimes to hide who we really are and sometimes to present what we believe is a better version of ourselves. Eventually, however, the mask always comes off, and for better or worse we must face the real person underneath.
I still may do something with that radiation mask at Halloween. I’ve also thought about putting it out with the trash, but I may want to keep it so I don’t forget what I came through and how it should have changed me for the better. Just so long as I don’t have to wear it again.