Another day of providing taxi service for my parents to Loyola Medical Center to meet with Dr. Emami. We had to wait for him to come into the examining room, so that just makes dad way woo anxious and agitated. The doctor is in a totally different mood when we meet with him - more friendly, easier to talk to, not as "scattered" as our meeting a few weeks ago.

Normally, he said, a patient in this condition will just be sent for Radiation Therapy "classically". But, based on recent info (over the past 2-3 months), if a Patient can tolerate chemo there is a beneficial effect adding chemo, not necessarily beneficial in this "specific presentation". Being realistic - long term cure "not very frequent" (it's still interesting listing to the doctor put sentences together. He speaks Farsi, so I wonder how much of what he says is being translated from his "native" tongue)

He proposes to start planning process for radiation therapy. Side effects: redness of skin, soreness, sore throat, loss of hair around site. If the treatment is also with chemo, side effects are more intense, with longer recovery.

He stresses that dad will chose what he wants done (chemo or not - dad has already decided to go forward with radiotherapy). He says that other university hospitals in the area basically say " Radiation and Chemo. Period." Loyola is very open - sort of a freedom of choice of treatment. About 20% of patients in this situation chose to add chemo.

So, he wants to go through the planning process for the radiation therapy, since that's being done no matter what. The cool thing is that Dr. Emami leads research using 3-D conformal radiotherapy - meaning dad will go in for still another CT scan - this time, to map the area in detail and store the data in separate computers. Then the doctor looks at about 60 individual slices around the area, and plots in the computer those "structures" that need to be radiated and those things he needs to "protect" (oh, you know, like the spinal chord). The computers then produce a 3-D image of the entire area and the radiation treatment is then precisely plotted to give the most aggressive treatment, saving the rest of the tissues from exposure. Pretty cool. The process, because of case load, takes almost a week, since team meetings are also done during this time.

Dad would come back then for a"rehearsal" or "practice" run, to see if everything lines up the way they believe it will. Treatment would start the next day. The treatment itself only takes about 2 minutes, and he should be in the department for no longer that 15-30 minutes a day. Every weekday for about 6 weeks straight.

So, we'll be back tomorrow for that Planning CT at 11:00am, and they have an appointment with Dr. Clark to discuss chemo next Tuesday at 4:30.

I felt better about the meeting than I thought. I got a chance to see dad's CT scans and saw the tumor is about 1cm x 2cm and it's not where I thought it was - it's to the left of his stoma (the opening in his neck) - it's pretty obvious when you look at films - you can see that the structures in his neck aren't symmetrical, though it was difficult for my untrained eye to detect.

Oh, well... back again tomorrow.

I wake up and get on the computer to do my "normal" morning things - go through my EMail, check out my Job Agent emails & visit the job posting websites that I follow, go through today's Las Vegas Review-Journal, check out the local sports pages, even check some of my favorite bloggers. About 9 o'clock I wander downstairs to grab some cookie and chill on the couch with the satellite.

"Hello."

I must have jumped a bit when I heard that, because Carol, who is laying on the couch, starts apologizing. She wasn't feeling well, so she didn't go to work. And I didn't have a clue that she was home on the couch in the family room.

I hate when that happens!