Radiation oncologist Dr. Frank Kimsey speaks about one of Erlanger hospital’s newest medical devices, the CyberKnife, during a press conference at Erlanger’s cancer center late Tuesday morning.Retired TVA engineer Hugh Gardner got restless as he sprawled across an Erlanger hospital medical table this summer.
He twiddled his thumbs and gazed at the ceiling, where he thought he’d count tiles. Instead he saw dogs, bears and other creatures in an illustration that featured puffy clouds and blue skies.
“I even had an image of Jesus after laying there a while,” he said.
All this focused his boredom, despite his reason for being there — radiation treatments for a cancerous prostate.
His mind stayed busy because he never felt a thing, thanks to Erlanger’s $7.3 million radiosurgery initiative that funded CyberKnife, a behemoth robot-controlled radiation beam that allows doctors to zap cancerous tumors that once were considered inoperable.