11.26.2007 - Treatment Begins

Treatment began this week. 11.26.2007 was a "dry run" of the focused radiation therapy. They called it a "dry run" because it was for fine tuning and calibration.

11.27.2008 was my first focused radiation therapy session. Unfortunately, the visit took over an hour when it was supposed to take only 15 minutes or so and we brought all the kids with us because we thought it would be so brief. They were late in getting me to the machine and then after the session, because the swelling in my head had decreased so significantly since the surgery, they wanted to make a new mesh mask for my head (which keeps my head positioned precisely) and rescan me wearing the mask with the CT machine.

11.28.2007, my brother-in-law volunteered to take me to my appointment. He volunteered for a lot because this was my first long day of treatment. The focused radiation therapy session was very brief and then I had my first IV chemotherapy infusion. They told me the IV session would be 90 minutes or so. Well, it didn't work out that way. We had left the house at 1230 hours and didn't get back home until 1800 hours.

What was a pleasant surprise was to learn that the neurooncologist wanted to change the chemotherapy schedule so that I had higher doses administered per session, but the sessions would be less frequent. The initial schedule was for the IV infusions to take place one day per week throughout the treatment plan and the oral chemotherapy to be taken every week day throughout the treatment plan. Now, I will be doing the IV infusions once every three weeks and the oral chemotherapy daily for a five day period once every three weeks.

They gave me anti-nausea medication with the IV and I haven't felt sick so far. Hopefully the oral chemotherapy won't cause me any nausea either...of course I will be taking anti-nausea medication with the oral chemotherapy as well.