Offensive Thinking

Brain tumors suck. Hi, I'm Patrick btw. This is my cancer blog. My "normal" stuff is over here.

Radiotherapy Part Four (And Last): All Finished

Yes, I took the mask home with me. Now I can have staredown contests with myself.
Yes, I took the mask home with me. Now I can have staredown contests with myself.

I finished treatment already on August 12th, but didn’t find the time to write something, sorry. I’m happy to say that healthwise, nothing changed throughout the treatment and I consider myself very lucky. I never experienced nausea or other physical symptoms (besides the hair loss, obviously). Again, the fatigue might have been slightly worse than usual, but not in a way that I could definitely blame it on the therapy.

As for the treatment plan, I got a dose of 2 Gy of radiation in every session. The dosages over the treatment days add up, so when I say I had a treatment plan of 60 Gy, it means that altogether, I had 30 sessions, equalling 6 weeks (no treatments on the weekend, remember?). We went up to 54 Gy for the whole cavity plus remaining tumor plus safety margin, and then 3 more sessions to get to 60 Gy for just the remaining tumor tissue (plus some safety margin).

Now all there is left is waiting a couple of weeks and then do an MRI (at Heidelberg again) to see what happened. Until then, it’s back to my normal life. Although life during treatment was not too different from my usual schedule, but I’m still glad that I do not have to go to the clinic every day. On the other hand, it was a good place to catch up on my reading… Nah, I’m happy to be through with radiation (for now).

P.S.: The bald head will stay for a while, as I have no idea how fast my hair will come back. I also don’t want to have bald spots showing, so I guess I’ll keep it this way for some time until I’m sure that everything will grow back properly. If it doesn’t then meh, I already am used to my shaved head, it could be worse ;).