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Just stopping by to say "Hi" and a public service announcement
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Started by CycloneComics,

48 posts in this topic

podochigae

podochigae

Posted
Posted

Thanks for sharing your story, John and Aaron, I just came across this thread tonight.  Just wanted to offer my thoughts and prayers to you and your families.  As a medical physicist in radiation oncology, I know that this is a very difficult process for patients.  The idea of receiving radiation is pretty scary.  Getting fit for the immobilization mask can get claustrophobic really fast.  Plus, you need to lie still on a hard couch for 20-30 minutes for each treatment (35 for head and neck).  Still, the radiation treatment process has greatly evolved over the last 15-20 years.  

   My dad had cancer of the small intestine in the 1960's.  Back then, they treated him with a Cobalt 60 radioactive source which has an energy of about 1.25 MV.  At that level, most of the energy gets deposited in the first 1cm of tissue.  So, my dad's skin got really black (burnt) and smelled, since the dose had to be deposited deeper where the tumor was.  In fact, in those days, doctors used to determine the amount of radiation patients received by examining how red their skin was.  

   Nowadays, hospitals have small linear accelerators that can produce photons of energies between 6 and 18 MV, which has what is called a skin-sparing effect (dose peaks about 1.5 - 2.5cm below the skin surface).  Much, much better than Cobalt 60.  Computers and dedicated treatment planning software are used to come up with personalized plans that target the tumors while sparing nearby, healthy organs.  Chemo and radiation are frequently used together - chemo for a more systemic treatment and radiation for a more localized treatment.  For head and neck cancers, we definitely contour the parotid glands (they produce saliva) and try to spare the dose that these organs receive in order to avoid dry mouth.  It just depends on how close / large the tumor is.

   Still, cancer is terrible, and I just wanted to pass along some words from the radiation side with the hope of offering some encouragement.  I know you most likely already finished the radiation treatments by now, but if you want to talk or have any questions about radiation or what you went through, feel free to PM me.  Keep in mind I am not a physician but I can help answer basic questions.  

All the best,

brian

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CHASEnBLUE

CHASEnBLUE

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1 hour ago, podochigae said:

Thanks for sharing your story, John and Aaron, I just came across this thread tonight.  Just wanted to offer my thoughts and prayers to you and your families.  As a medical physicist in radiation oncology, I know that this is a very difficult process for patients.  The idea of receiving radiation is pretty scary.  Getting fit for the immobilization mask can get claustrophobic really fast.  Plus, you need to lie still on a hard couch for 20-30 minutes for each treatment (35 for head and neck).  Still, the radiation treatment process has greatly evolved over the last 15-20 years.  

   My dad had cancer of the small intestine in the 1960's.  Back then, they treated him with a Cobalt 60 radioactive source which has an energy of about 1.25 MV.  At that level, most of the energy gets deposited in the first 1cm of tissue.  So, my dad's skin got really black (burnt) and smelled, since the dose had to be deposited deeper where the tumor was.  In fact, in those days, doctors used to determine the amount of radiation patients received by examining how red their skin was.  

   Nowadays, hospitals have small linear accelerators that can produce photons of energies between 6 and 18 MV, which has what is called a skin-sparing effect (dose peaks about 1.5 - 2.5cm below the skin surface).  Much, much better than Cobalt 60.  Computers and dedicated treatment planning software are used to come up with personalized plans that target the tumors while sparing nearby, healthy organs.  Chemo and radiation are frequently used together - chemo for a more systemic treatment and radiation for a more localized treatment.  For head and neck cancers, we definitely contour the parotid glands (they produce saliva) and try to spare the dose that these organs receive in order to avoid dry mouth.  It just depends on how close / large the tumor is.

   Still, cancer is terrible, and I just wanted to pass along some words from the radiation side with the hope of offering some encouragement.  I know you most likely already finished the radiation treatments by now, but if you want to talk or have any questions about radiation or what you went through, feel free to PM me.  Keep in mind I am not a physician but I can help answer basic questions.  

All the best,

brian

Thank you Brian for offering those details. I don't want to go off track too much, but I definitely would have reached out to someone like yourself with questions since you are so kind to make yourself available. A few months before I ended up having to go through R-CHOP in 2018, I was going through the initial mask fitting, and had issues with them locking it into place to while I was on the table, along with my hands and feet being "shackled" if you will, so I was not even sure I could actually do it for any length of time. However, my cancer began turning aggressive all of a sudden and a tumor started growing quickly and pressing on my artery in my right groin - so they disbanded the radiation, resulting in almost a year of hardcore chemo.

Every day is a blessing. Just offering to help people out like you have really means a lot to those who are going through these battles - more than most people realize.

 

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