Entry posted by Tom Galli
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I'm writing this from a Florida Hospital radiation clinic waiting room. My daughter is having intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) to treat her meningioma residual left over from surgery 3 months ago. This was her second brain surgery and in between was the birth of my granddaughter. Ironically, our greatest joy was sandwiched between our greatest fear.
She'll have at least 30 fractional sessions. I'm here doing grandfather and father stuff, the former fun, the latter hard as nails.
There are substantial risks. The tumor residual is lodged around her eye socket and the impact to her vision is of vast concern. We've talked about it. Mostly we try and forget. Daughter feeds back my mantra of only worrying about things that can be controlled but it doesn't ease my concern. Too much experience in this radiation domain to not worry. I find myself undone by uncertainty, again!
Yesterday's clinical visit experience was my first in a long time. Things haven't changed. Quiet people waiting for their time with "the beast", families talking in hushed tones, most have lost hair indicating combination therapy. One change: the radio oncologist came out to greet my daughter. He supervised the fitting of the facial fixture and stayed through the entire dose application. That was unique in my experience and immensely comforting. Maybe the cancer community is learning to treat people not patients.
Passing on parental knowledge and experience is expected but not on this subject matter. We need to fry this tumor, but the potential vision side-effects are disconcerting. We've got one chance, twenty-nine radiation bullets left, and then scanziety and hope. Tumor is a word I need to discard from my vocabulary.
We will stay the course.
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