Treatment - Meet The Team

Something that I have to adjust to is the team approach to the way cancer is managed. There isn't a treatment czar per se. Instead it is a collaberative approach where all parties involved in the treatment work together with no one group quarterbacking the whole thing.

In my situation there are two primary types of treatment, chemotherapy and radiation therapy. It used to be that they would treat this type of cancer with just radiation therapy but a study done in the 90's showed that using radiation with chemo produced much better results. This is the study that has the 70% survival rate. (The radiation oncologist I met with today said his old boss was one of the people that ran the study. Bonus points for the radiation oncologist!)

So here is the quick overview of how the treatment works. Simultaneously they start the chemo and the radiation. The radiation treatment is done 5 days a week for 7 weeks. The chemotherapy has two phases. The first phase is three courses. The first course is delivered at the beginning then 3 weeks later you get the second course and then 3 weeks later you get the third course. After that you have an additional treatment with the primary drug at a bit lower dose and then another drug to go with it.

From talking to both the oncologist and the radiation oncologist today I think I can summarize the goals of the dual treatment. The radiation is designed to attack the identifiable tumors from the various tests that they have been running. It is in essence the targeted somewhat precision munitions to go after the big targets. The chemotherapy is designed to help fight the tumors but also any other stray cancer cells that may be lingering around. The chemo is like the ground troops going door to door to work on the entire body. Together in a coordinated approach they attack the identifiable tumors and any stray nasty cells that might linger after the aerial attack is done.

In the next post I will go over the radiation treatment since I met with that group today. The room where they administer the treatments is like something out of Star Trek. The facility here in Ithaca is 2 years old and is the state of the art. (They even have free wifi access and coffee in the waiting area.)

Next week I go for chemo education and will get into that a bit more then.