Today I had session #6. Following radiation, I had to wait to see my radiation oncologist, Dr. Marquez. As usual, she was running late. I didn't see her until close to 2p. And then when I saw her, she was in and out. Nothing new to report. She looked at the color of my chest to see if it was turning red. It is pink, but she said my whole chest was pink... and I'm not getting radiation on my whole chest. I told her I was discharged from physical therapy and she said "yea!" No peeling or itchiness of my skin either. I told her that I have been applying the calendula. I also got my treatment plan. I'll have to scan it and then I'll share with you what the plan looks like. :)
Oh yes, today my session was just a tad longer. Every week the techs have to take new pictures of me just in case I have lost or gained weight.
Fact #6: Today I learned about matched fields and divergence. In order to get my supraclavicular nodes, my treatment includes matched fields, tangents and divergence. Divergence is important because they want maximum radiation or energy to the area they are treating. In addition, they don't want to radiate more than they have to. Dan explained it this way: think of a flashlight. When you put your hand about a foot in front of it, the light is pretty dense and small. However, if you shine the light 6 feet away on the wall, the light scatters and is less intense. This is divergence. So when they radiate my clav nodes, they don't want the radiation like the flashlight beam 6 feet away... they want the energy to be centered, concentrated and precise. So what they do is line me up on all tangents (x, y and z planes). The MLCs also come into play because they shield out extra radiation so it doesn't hit other organs or other parts of my body. It's kind of complicated... but that is the layman's terms! Hope that's a good fact!
Six treatments down... only 22 to go! Time is flying!
No comments:
Post a Comment