Tomorrow I have the last radiation treatment (don't worry, I'm okay), a treatment that requires I lie on my stomach with my face in a hole in a table, so I can breathe. Resting my face on that for 30 minutes was miserable. Most of the 11-pound weight of my head was borne by a thin ridge of bone above my eyebrows, and that thin line really ached.

So I asked myself what's really squishy and resilient, and I showed up for treatment with 3 fat rolls of non-slip shelf stuff, the rubbery thing that's supposed to stop things from sliding. One roll was for my forehead, the other two were for my cheekbones. Pieces of new cotton fabric from the stash covered the rolls to make a pleasant surface texture. The techs think I'm a pain, but they've probably not had chronic inflammation in their sinuses. Come to think of it, they've probably never been on the machine.

So that's my latest pain control method. It's a real help.