Bonus Rounds!!!

As you know, Monday is Doctor Day, so upon finishing radiotherapy treatment #23, we got the official word on the Booster Treatments.

The first 25 treatments are actually considered palliative -- the goal was to stop tumor growth. Since dp is tolerating those well, the booster is bonus radiotherapy with a narrower field to see if they can do some serious damage to the tumor. 6600 CG over an eight-day period, commencing the day after treatment 25.

So now the new magic number is 33, and the new completion day is two weeks from today.

We also learned more today about the actual radiotherapy process - I think dp wrote about it earlier. The effect that radiation has on the body is caused by the fact that the energy in the radiation can cleave a hydrogen cell off of water molecules. The remaining HO hydroxide molecules are free radicals, which run around reacting with other particles, damaging the DNA of all the cells they come in contact with. According to the helpful young resident who's been sharing all this, healthy cells are able to repair this damage while cancer cells are not.

dp says this explanation makes it easier for her to visualize what's supposed to be happening. Personally, I envision tiny little Abbey Hoffman dudes smacking around cancer cells with their protest signs, but I guess free radicals aren't what they used to be...

dp's been rearranging plants, shrubs and trees. She moved a bunch around this weekend, which she says she'll blog about, while I worked on overdue bookwork and code for a new shopping cart for a website I'm designing. We manage to stay busy.


With a tip of the cranium to CraniumMan and his son, the following graphic:




...it really _is_ like throwing money at Carneys *nods*


Happy Billiards Day!!!