Radiation

This morning, my dad and I met with Dr. Chin at Rose Medical to discuss the radiation treatments after the chemo is done.  Radiation is recommended to make everything much more effective. 

So, at some point after the fourth chemo treatment, I will get some more scans to see what progress has been made so far.  This will determine if I need more chemo treatments.  Then about two weeks after the last chemo, we'll get some other scans to determine the pattern of radiation treatment, basically where the radiation will target.  The treatments will last for three weeks, Monday to Friday.  Weekends are off to recover.  Once we're done with that, we just go into monitoring mode to see how things are going.  I should be able to travel by this time.

There are few side effects with radiation.  The dosage is going to be pretty low, so for the most part, I shouldn't have to worry about too much.  It's possible that a tumor can grow in that area, because we're talking about possible genetic mutations, so that's something that needs to be monitored. 

I guess I tend to think of this as a short term thing, but more and more, I realize that I'll need to keep on top of things for a long time.