My tatoos

I felt a little rebellious today so I went out and got some tattoos, three to be exact. We met with the radiation oncologist today to prepare for radiation treatments. The plan is to radiate the entire head. There are 6 identifiable cancer spots on my brain. All are small; the largest is located in the front left lobe of the brain. The others are very small and difficult to see in the scans. The cancer was introduced through the brain fluids, so that is why we have to do a full head radiation, rather than spot treatments. The radiation will most likely start next Monday. Today I received a CT scan of my head, and I was fitted with a radiation mask. The radiation mask is custom created and fitted to my face; the intent is to protect the part of my head that we don’t want to radiate. I will receive 10 doses of radiation, one each day for 10 days. Side affects can include nausea, dizziness, disorientation, fatigue, short term memory loss, and hair loss (crap I just barely got my hair back). Both my oncologist and the radiation oncologist are optimistic that this will clear up the cancer on my brain. There are not many other options if this doesn’t work. I won’t be able to drive while receiving the radiation treatments, so Monica will now be my chauffeur, in addition to everything else she does. There is also an option to do some radiation on the cancer in the lungs at the same time. I am working with my oncologist to decide if this is the right time to pursue this, there are good reasons on both sides of that decision. I also received my maintenance drugs today. So I am feeling good today, once we start the radiation treatments next week I may not feel so well. Oh by the way the tattoos are alignment marks that are put on both sides and the middle of my chest to help the radiologist line up the radiation machine to exactly where it needs to go every time, and yes they are permanent. I guess that’s about all I know right now. This is all very scary stuff and Monica and I have certainly had our ups and downs over the last few days. But I guess I have decided that we are doing everything possible both medically, and spiritually to fix this and in the end that’s all we can do. So there is no need to cry, and no need to fret, that doesn’t do much good. We just pull ourselves up, put a smile on our face and never ever give up. Take care -Eric