“On the first day I just thought how the people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki must have felt, and in the whole surrounding area that got blasted. You are uncontrollably ill. There is no stopping the nausea for six to seven hours. Everything goes haywire for the first three to four hours and after that you are just dead on the floor,” said Peader MacMahon. “When you are actually receiving the radiation, you have a subtle feeling that something is passing through your body. I like to think of radiation as being a natural healer; I consider it part of everyday life as it is emanating from every point.”

MacMahon, 37, a Bellingham musician and survivor of a recent battle with testicular cancer almost immediately became inured by the austere, sparse walls that frame the hospital room where he received radiation treatments daily for four weeks. The room's tranquil ambiance is eclipsed by the ominous stature of the heavy machinery.

The stolid silence that permeates within the room is unnerved by the shrill tones of a buzzer that bleeds from overhead speakers. Dozens of eyes shoot impenetrable gazes toward the patient through video cameras that line the plates of glass that flank the exterior of the room. Doctors, loved ones and the curious stand by as peers of the patient.

The utter isolation that MacMahon experienced during his daily visits to a local hospital for radiation treatments was compounded by the “horrible” New Age music used as a relaxation method. The low-tempo droning fills the room, no more relaxing than the monotony of the buzzer.

Within minutes, the patient will rise from the crisp white sheets and supine pillows, the soft moan of the buzzer will acquiesce to time, and the of New Age music will dissolve. MacMahon will pass through the doors, this time to exit, only to return tomorrow for just another in a series of radiation treatments to curb the onset of his cancer.

“What the radiation machines are doing is harvesting the natural energy of the earth and directing in a positive way toward your body to stop a mutation,” MacMahon continued, relaying with candor the weeks spent in radiation and its effects,“ and to readdress what has happened inside the body by shaking your cells and destroying the cells that don’t need to be there.”

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