We made it down to MD Anderson. Of course, Dad insisted on driving!
Good news – when we got here, we found out it was free hat night at the Rotary House! Score!
Here he is making his selection.....
And the winner is....
He looks pretty excited.....LOL
So.....It is finally time for radiation to start tomorrow now that chemo is done. Here is a little information about radiation therapy:
Radiation therapy is the treatment of cancer using therapeutic beams of high-energy waves. Radiation therapy machines aim specific amounts of the radiation at tumors or parts of the body where there is/was cancer. Although the radiation is targeted for eliminating the cancer cells, it interacts with all cells. The daily radiation uses many small doses (fractions) spread out each day. This helps protect those healthy cells in the treatment area. He will not get radiation on the weekends. The break from the treatment on weekends allows the normal cells to recover (healthy cells are capable of repairing themselves, but cancer cells are incapable of repair)!!
Dad will be getting “external radiation therapy” —radiation delivered into the body from a linear accelerator (he won’t become radioactive though).
Dad's radiation treatment should be three weeks. Once he starts, completing the entire course of radiation therapy is extremely important. It is important not to miss or delay treatments because it can lessen how well the radiation kills the cancer cells. During the actual treatment sessions, he should be in the treatment room between 10-30 minutes, but the actual radiation should be for 1-2 minutes of that time.
The radiation machine used is quite large. The machine has movable parts which automatically rotate around. They put tattoos on my dad so they know where to target the radiation...yep tattoos.
Just kidding, this is what they really look like....
Minus the shark with the lasers....
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