I had a meeting with a radiologist yesterday. My first initial consultation regarding radio treatment. Basically the plan will be to nuke my neck and chest once a day for 3 weeks (3×5). This will happen probably around 6 weeks after my chemotherapy ends. They like to give you body a bit of time to recover from chemo before killing other things. My last jab of chemo juice is November 18th (just around the corner!!!), and 6 weeks after this basically puts me into the new year.
There are a stack of side effects related to radio, which differ from Chemotherapy – but the combination of chemo + radio has better results (smaller chance of relapse) so radio is the way I’m going. I do have the choice however, to not take on the radio – this would mean that I would need an additional 3 cycles more of chemotherapy (another 3 months, 6 months in total).
The main short-term side effects are things like dry throat, redness of exposed areas, and fatigue as you go on. Unlike chemo, the effects are compounded as you continue the treatment.
The ‘potential’ long term side effects/risks can be quite nasty. These range from losing the functioning of the saliva glands in one’s mouth (constant dry mouth) to the development of secondary cancers (1% risk). As my thymus will be getting blasted, there is also a small risk that I will develop problems here in the future (5%).
I’ll have to get changed into a hospital gown and lie down on/in a machine before it zaps me. The ‘zapping’ (not the term most commonly used) will only be 3-4 minutes per day, so the actual process of radiotherapy administration should not disrupt my day too much. Hoping I can return to work prior and during this time, however time will tell on that front.
In other news my next chemo session is tomorrow, this will be 4 from 6. 4/6 = 66% – yeah!