Today was the beginning of my radiation treatment for
prostate cancer. Of course, after the first
treatment, I can’t really tell if anything is going on, but so far so good. As a recap of how I got here, I was diagnosed
with prostate cancer in 2021, watched it for 3 years and then determined that
it was progressing and we decided it was time to treat. You might not expect this from me, but I did a
little RESEARCH. 😁 I wanted to make sure I chose the best doctor,
the best facility and the latest treatment.
I wound up choosing the City of Hope, Lennar Cancer Center in
Irvine. We decided on
(MRI)-guided stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT). This is state-of-the-art
radiation treatment that is given using real time MRI guidance. It takes 2-4
scans per second to make sure they are within the margins of the staging scan. It is accurate to
sub millimeter levels and because of this they can deliver a higher-than-normal
radiation level. Because of the accuracy
and the higher radiation it cuts the treatment time down from 25-35 days to
only 5 days. Last week I had my staging
and location scans (CT and MRI) to pinpoint exactly where the radiation is to
be delivered. I have 3 tattoos (temporary)
identifying the positioning points. I
will have another treatment tomorrow and then Monday, Wednesday and Friday of
next week and I am done. The other nice
thing about my treatment is that there is NO hormone therapy used. This is partially because I am considered Low-Intermediate risk. I am grateful for that, as I understand that can
have more side effects than the actual radiation. Total time for the 20-mile trip there, the
treatment and the trip back home was 2 hours.
It is REALLY quick.
My CLL is still under control so that is one less thing I
have to think about. Donna and I were
invited to Lilly Pharmaceuticals (I have been on their drug for 12 months) company
headquarters in Indianapolis in May to be part of a corporate event where they
invite patients that have used their drugs to talk about their journeys. There were about 3-400 Lilly employees in the
audience and several thousand watching the live streaming of the event. I was the only CLL /Leukemia patient there and
shared the stage with lung, ovarian and colon cancer patients. They treated us very well and Donna and I
were really impressed by the entire Lilly organization. They seem to value the patient’s input and we
were asked to share our ideas about how we think they could make the patient’s
journey better.
After that, we then went to Alabama to see Matt, Randi,
Naomi, Liv and Jude. We spent 11 days in
the ‘South’ and were also able to make a trip down to the gulf and stayed at a
really nice resort where the kids spent most of the time in the pool.
I hope you all enjoy a wonderful summer.
Terry
