Models in 3D are always good teaching tools. The cake below looks so like a real Linac machine that I had to look twice. “Kelly Bakes Cakes” who made the baked and iced model linear accelerator says:

“I feel privileged to have been asked to make this cake for the opening of Palmerston North Hospital’s new Varian Truebeam linear accelerator for radiation therapy.”
This is quite old news from 2020 which appeared online.  Since then it looks as if Palmerston North installed another new radiation machine in 2021.

 

 

Meetings

We had our first Zoom meeting with a speaker on 28 September. It was so pleasant and informative that Toni, our meeting organiser, is planning to schedule a meeting once a month.

September’s meeting was on oral health with a hospital dental hygienist as the speaker. Notes on the meeting will be published on this site under Resources/ Dental Care once they have been checked.

One thing we learnt was to use only a pea sized lump of high fluoride toothpaste – don’t water it and don’t rinse after cleaning. You don’t want to dilute the good ingredients which need time to be absorbed by the teeth.

Topics discussed on our forum

Pain relief

Unintended weight loss

Soft food diet

Post-surgical swelling

Tongue Cancer and its effects

This video  gives us an interesting look into the effect of tongue cancer on a young woman’s life. Her slight speech impairment was picked up by her baby as he learnt to talk. (Young Tongues is a charity run by young women with tongue cancer.)

https://twitter.com/i/status/1577003176410370048

A patient journey in both senses of the word

One of the Australian members in our Facebook group is off on the month long (or more) El Camino walk in Portugal and Spain. Yvonne has had a tough process since her surgery and chemoradiation  and has made it her business to help fellow HNC patients with their eating, especially in transitioning off the PEG tube. The video below is part of a series and contains some interesting musings about the PEG.

Yvonne has been training in the Adelaide Hills and in spite of all her challenges is embarking on one of the biggest walking journeys of all.

https://youtu.be/Ga-OCeoaCoA