Radiation Olympics & The Brian Command Device

Radiation Olympics & The Brian Command Device

🌼 Date: Monday, April 20, 2026

⚡ Energy: Slightly toasted but still sarcastic

❤️ Status: Olympic breath-holding hopeful

🙂 Outlook: Grateful for technology… even when it glitches

Today when I arrived for my daily dose of radiation, I locked the door to my dressing room and started taking off my sweatshirt when I realized something horrible.

I forgot to stop by my personal walk-in closet and choose my matching outfit for the day.

Forehead slap.

So I redressed myself and paid a visit to the wardrobe to make my selection. Priorities, people.

When I finally get called back, I climb up onto the cold table and wait for what has become one of my favorite parts of this entire process: the towels that have been heated to approximately 108 degrees. Yes folks, I checked the temperature on the cabinet. If I’m going to be here every day, I might as well do some investigative journalism.

Once I’m positioned on the table, I take my arms out of the gown, exposing myself and probably traumatizing everyone in the room. They place my arms in these trays above my head where I have to hang onto little hand grips. Then they cover my arms with the towel that has clearly kissed the sun and drape another one across my legs.

For a brief moment, it almost feels like a mini spa treatment.

That illusion ends quickly when they start repositioning me into a shape that is not comfortable for any human skeleton.

Then they turn my head to the right because they are blasting the lymph nodes on the left side of my neck and clavicle. That’s when the little screen drops down in front of my face and I begin my breathing exercises — also known as training for the Olympic Breath-Holding Trials.

Only today, the screen wasn’t showing the nice calming woodland scene.

Instead, it had the letters VCD floating across it.

I mentioned it to the nurse and he said the Wi-Fi was acting up and they had just reset the screen so hopefully it would reconnect and wake up soon.

But you know me.

I always need a Plan B.

So I asked what happens if it doesn’t wake up from its slumber.

“Well,” he said, “we’ll have to use BCD the old-school way.”

One of the nurses is named Brian, and he would be my Brian Command Device for the day — manually telling me over the intercom whether I needed to take a deeper breath or a shallower one.

The nice thing about the VCD — the Visual Command Device — is that I can see where the white line is sitting inside the green box. That way I know exactly how much room I have to play with before the machine decides I’ve dipped below the safe zone and shuts off.

So far, knock on wood, when I can see the line myself I haven’t had any problems.

But today, with Brian guiding me over the intercom…

It took longer.

For some reason I wasn’t taking a deep enough breath — even though it felt exactly the same as every other day — and apparently I wasn’t able to hold the breath long enough for the entire treatment.

The one targeted at my armpit took three tries before we got it right.

Ugh.

As if this ordeal isn’t torture enough, let’s prolong it.

It definitely made me thankful for technology… even though it glitches from time to time.

And it also made me wonder:

How in the world did we survive without it?

💗 Tina –
One Badass Day at a Time