Today I began another journey

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