Every Monday he drives to his mothers house to pick her up. He drives her across town to a modern new hospital building. They don their masks, answer the questions to be admitted and take the elevator to the 3rd floor clinic.

Total state of art machines and techniques are used, and she patiently submits.

Only she may enter the room where the technicians check her vitals and start their procedures.   She is immobilized in a cast made to hold her head perfectly still. The radiation is precisely aimed to focus on the mass that is trying to destroy her jugular vein.

Only she knows the agony of being unable to move or receive comfort as the technology of the moment tries to kill the cancer.

It is brutal. They told her it would be. Her lips are swollen, burns inside her mouth and throat make eating impossible. She is basically starving as one or two spoons of soup or yogurt are all she can tolerate each day.

Even water burns, and anything cold is unbearable.

The son takes her home, helps her inside and to her bed, where she lays exhausted and weak.

Tomorrow he will pick her up again and repeat the process.

She has five more treatments …the machine has five more chances to complete killing the cancer hopefully without killing her.