Today was a totally new experience with the radio-oncologist. It's a she and she was really talkative. The session was scheduled for 15 minutes but we ended up spending 45 minutes. First we looked at the results from the planning CT and there is really a lymph node in level 3 on the right side that is very suspicious. The size is 15 mm x 10 mm. Even though the node still has a good shape (oval) the shade is making it suspicious. The expectation is that radiation will kill it. Once more I've asked how the killing can be tracked. My radio-oncologist said that a new CT maybe 6 weeks after finishing the radiation will tell. Why waiting so long? Wouldn't a check just after the end make more sense? As said previous the impact from radiation will go on beyond the end of the therapy. Today she also mentioned that most oral tumors react positive towards radiation. It's not always that the tumor is fully being killed but in all her professional time she has only seen once that an oral tumor continued to grow while doing radiation. She was talking about more than 500 treatments.
I've also asked her to look into the PET - wanted to see if we could see and confirm what I feel is a left over in the tongue. Unfortunately they PET people didn't load all the images. Will find more next time. Anyway - my initial thought of doing a little surgery while doing the radiation was dismissed. Not possible. In that case it doesn't really matter to see the PET. I can sense a strange feeling in the tongue and will continue to observe it. Most likely this knot in the tongue is pressing against a nerve and that causes the only pain I have right now. Unfortunately the pain is got more intense and I have to take pain killers. I'm using Ponstan and Novalgin. From all what I know I now still have some tumor left over (lymph node third level on the right and knot in the tongue). Somehow concerning but not really different from the start - we thought this is the case and thus we've decided to do radiation.
Today was also the first day I've felt somehow tired. It's getting better since I had lunch. I'm trying to exercise every day but can't do it today. Although I had time between my two sessions - the indoor pool I wanted to go swimming was closed I didn't have my running gear with me.
Besides the pain in the tongue and feeling a little tired everything else seems to be still OK. I can still taste food as much as before beginning the radiation. Most likely this will change in about 3 - 5 sessions from now. My saliva is still OK too.
Today I've also read an article about alternative treatments. Obviously this is very controversial. My take on it is that I don't want to replace my current treatment with alternative treatments but I'm interested to see how I can complement it. The idea is to make the whole thing to be less painful and to improve overall quality of life. An interesting source on the net is www.cam-cancer.org. From what I've read so far - this is more than just todays article - people seem to feel green tee has an overall positive affect. I like green tea - so that is fine with me.
The article also mentioned a book from Gerd Nagel, once a very successful oncologist and later leukemia patient himself. "Krebs, was man fuer sich selber tun kann"
Less enthusiastic about positive affects are experts with regards to: Mistel injections. Nagel states the fact that neither negative impact has been found so far. Another useful source about this alternative treatments can be found at Lukasklinik.
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