The Cancer File

The Cancer Diary-Radiation

Eighth of fourteen columns

The security process at the clinic is impressive. An identification card is issued and it must be presented to the technician before one can be admitted to the radiation room.

When the ID-card is inserted by the technician into a slot that is connected to a computer, the patient’s picture appears on its screen – only then may he may enter Frankenstein’s parlor.

I wore shorts instead of trousers this time and escaped the requirement of doffing the pants and wearing the ever-stylish hospital Johnny.

On the table, I unzipped, dropped my shorts to the groin level and exposed my abdomen to what was to come; I slipped my legs into the slots that kept my body in a constant position while the blocking process took place.

The machine used in the radiation room, I immediately noticed, is different from the one used in simulation.

Instead of a huge donut hole through which the body is passed during simulation, I was this time looking up at a round, black and silent eye that, I was soon to learn, could be moved to the right and to the left so that my body would be exposed to it from every possible angle, even underneath.

The idea behind blocking (which is held in a different room with the patient lying on a table with a different configuration) is to line the body up with the tattoo marks that were placed on my abdomen during simulation.

Once this was perfectly accomplished, technicians awakened the overhead eye; they left the room while the machine purred and took picture after picture of my body, from the left, the right and underneath.

The technicians returned after each picture, reloaded the film and then they raced again to the safety of an outside room as the super-powerful rays penetrated my body.

The information gleaned from blocking is fed into a computer, which will thereafter guide the same machine to bombard my body with beams of radiation.

The entire procedure took less that a half-hour; it was painless.

Radiation patients at the Peabody clinic appear at the same time, five days a week, until the series of 40 treatments is complete.

Dutifully, I obeyed this rule after first going to my doctor’s office for another shot in the belly of the hormone, Zoladex.

I must admit that this experience is somewhat unsettling from a psychological point of view. For example, a shot in the arm can be comfortably described as a “treatment.” On the other hand, when someone plunges a sharp object into your belly, the word “attack” seems more appropriate.

The side effects associated with Zoladex have so far, in my case, been tolerable (hot flashes). My urologist tells me I will get these shots every three months for as much as a year – maybe, three years.

My first radiation treatment, held in the same room, was administered by the same people who made the blocking tests. The process was the same, but shorter.

Mixed in with the treatment itself was a repetition of the picture-taking procedure.

I felt nothing during or after treatment.

So far, so good.

This ends the blow-by-blow account of my journey to the radiation room because I don’t expect future treatments to be much different from the first one.

If I experience side effects later on, I’ll explain them in a column; at the end of the radiation cycle, I’ll write a review.

And up the line somewhere, I’ll report the success or the failure of this attempt to kill one more cancer – my cancer.