part 1 (sorry, a bit to long for one post, part 2 follows)
Hello Family and Friends at CVO
Thanks again for all your uplifting words, thoughs and prayers
Finally, yesterday, I had my radiation appointment. It was two days before the 4 week aniversary of my surgery.
Even though it turned out to be what has become the norm for Sue and I, we went fully believing that the next step into my battle with thymic carcinoma cancer was finally going to be engaged yesterday. Though it has been a very odd chain of events that has lead me down this rough and bummpy road this so far. I tried hard to maintain a positive outlook and to be rested for this part of the fight and onward. However, the Radiation Doc said in a nut shell. Because my cancer is stage 4a, very aggressive, and hard to kill, they won't give me radiation because the remaining cancer needs (g-ry 60) radiation 5 days a week for 8 weeks to maybe kill my cancer, but the tumor and the marginal area of cancer and healthy parts and pieces that remain after the bulk of the tumor was removed surgically must be zapped as well to even have the hope that all the cancer would be toasted. That would be the point in this fight where radiation and chemo treatment would over lap and help each to win the battle for me.
Unfortunately for me I won't experience that battlefield, because my heart can only withstand a level of about 15 to 20 of those G-ry radiation mesurements without permanent damage to the healty tissue of my heart, and the area of my esophagus also needs 60 G-ry radiation and is more than it could recieve and still allow me to swallow and other normal uses. Another area that cannot recieve the 60 G-ry radiation is my spinal cord at the L9 area, it can only withstand about 15 to 20 as well, otherwise the damage to heathy parts (mainly my heart, my esophagus and my spinal cord) and the consequences out weigh the good that could be hoped for. The damage to my heart would most likely cause my otherwise heathy heart to have serious problems just pumping my blood at proper pressure, beats per minute, proper rhythm and even up to stroke and heart attacks could be the result of the radiation treatments. The damage to my esophagus would affect my ability to swallow and all the problems that that could add. The spinal cord damage would likely paralyze me from (L9) my chest down if the treatments went as planned. The problems that that could and or would cause is to many to list, just know this, I have a living will that was written long before my surgery and I made it clear then that I really didn't much favor the way of life that much of the possible outcome could give me if I followed through with the radiation treatment or chemo as presented to me yesterday. Now, put that together with the reality that those are only 3 of the areas that the cancer margin involves my vital organs or parts that make life normal. Now add, my left lung still has a tumor that hasn't been touched yet. That lung tumor wasn't done because of the difficulty it would have been during the surgery. The Doc yesterday spoke of another surgery now to remove the right lung tumor. I'm not keen on that idea now that I have learned all this other news cuncerning my survival statistics. The margin area around largest tumor that ended up messureing 19 X 15 X 9cm roughly 7 1/2" X 6" X 3 1/2" is pretty big. What I was told is this, "The surgery was a task of taking the jelly out of a jelly donut and still have a donut when that was done, the radiations task is to remove all the jelly that was left behind as well as the margin that includes all the donut parts that have any jelly mixed in plus a little more dough of the donut to be as sure as you can be that you get all the jelly (cells), then the chemo would attack and kill everything in me with a messured dose and timeline to allow my heathy cells to rebound while the cancer cells wouldn't have time to rebound before the next chemo treatment, inching toward the point of overcoming the cancer. I was told that that could take months of treatments."
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Topic: I might be down, but I'm not out! (Read 256442 times)