12-30-04/Thursday

I went back to Boston yesterday and met with one of my regular doctors, and also to meet with the Radiation Oncologist Specialist. The meeting with my regular doctor was more of a routine check up, looking at different blood count levels and to see how things are going on the newly prescribed meds. Discussing my two largest concerns lack of sleep, fatigue and constipation, he prescribed new medicine for the sleep deprivation, which is something similar to valium. It must work because I slept well last night. Thankfully for the constipation he pulled out the "big guns" of meds. for that. He prescribed me the same meds but in a much smaller dose than is given to people who have a colonoscopy "have cameras sent up their butt" That has brought great relief. Just what you all want to hear about my bowel movements. ( I hope to never mention that subject again.) He says the fatigue is a side effect of one of my new drugs taking place of the chemo and there is not much we can do about that.

Meeting with the Radiation/Oncology Specialist, Dr. Stevens, proved to be a little intimidating. There is a lot more to this radiology than I thought. The risk of negative side effects seems much higher than chemo, something I did not even consider. The potential risks are permanent loss of smell, cataracts are the larger side effects. They have a team of six, or so, doctors and nurses attending and working one case at a time which is a lot more involved than I would have guessed. They did not get underway with actual radiation yesterday. They said they have about 4 hours of mapping the tumor, similar to a topographical map, and because the tumor has shown no sign of increasing they have decided to start on Wednesday January 5th. What they did was a little creepy, they made a mask of my face that makes 'Jason from Halloween' movies look tame. They mold your whole face, sort of like a cast and they stretch it beyond your face so they can clamp it in some fashion to a table to keep my head perfectly located every time. The doctor said they are looking at 1/2 millimeter accuracy and the mask is also to protect areas that they don't want radiated. The treatment will be every day for 4 weeks and 2 days. The length of treatment will only be about 10 minutes. Fortunately the minor side effects, such as fatigue, should only set in during the last week of treatment due to the low dose each treatment.

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