At it's core the machine is a linear accelerator generating high energy X-Ray photons, and then focusing them in a very precise manner onto and within malignant tissue. It's heavily computer controlled these days. Whereas your normal X-Ray machine produces an energy beam in the thousands of the Electron-Volt (eV) range, these machine produce it in the range of millions.
Before I continue, I'll answer one question straight up that most people ask:
Q: Does it hurt?
A: The simple answer is NO!
A slightly more complicated answer might be that the side-effects such as the radiation burns that the machine might eventually induce on the tissue surrounding the target area can become very painful - and that will make going through treatment a painful experience, especially in the last few weeks. It will differ from person to person - how deep the radiation beams are reaching in, and what area on your body is being targetted.
But the actual radiotherapy process generally lasts about 10 minutes or so, and the radiation does not itself hurt.
N.B.: the explanations in this post probably pertain to people undergoing head and neck radiotherapy. The experiences and processes for people being targetted in other areas of the body may be somewhat different. Similarly, how things are done in other cancer clinics and what services are available, may differ.
1. BEFORE YOU COME TO THE RADIOTHERAPY CLINIC
Make sure that you're wearing light comfortable clothing. Most days I wore a simple zip-up jacket which was easy to get off and on again. At the very least you will have to take your shoes off.
Also, if the oncology nurses and doctors suggest that you're at a stage where increased pain medication is required to help you through the treatment because of radiation burns etc. - bloody-well take their advice! The oncology doctors and nurses are your friends - listen to them!
I tried to tough it out for a while and was stupidly uncomfortable to the point that I didn't think I could handle any more treatment. One of the registrars had to sit me down and give an ever-so-nice talking to - which amounted to "shut the fuck up and take your bloody pills!" So if they prescribe the pain relief - make sure you take some before you head off to hospital so that it's kicked in by the time you're ready for treatment.
2. DON'T TRY AND DRIVE YOURSELF IN
As the radiotherapy progresses you might find that a certain level of fatigue caused by the treatment may start to hit you. This is because the cancer is trying to grow, but at the same time the radiotherapy is trying to destroy it, and may be damaging surrounding tissues. So the cancer is sucking energy trying to regrow, and your body is sucking energy trying to heal. Hopefully the latter will win - huzzah!
Upshot is that you can tire easily and sleep for long periods. Prepare for this and just let it happen. If you fight against the fatigue then you'll only feel like shit, and won't be helping your body one teeny-weeny iota.
Sometimes after therapy you might feel a little tired and woozy. Don't try and drive! Get someone to drive you, or catch some public transport.
The Radiotherapy Unit can organise to have you driven to therapy by the Illawarra Cancer Carers - volunteers who give their time to support the Cancer Care Unit and its' patients. Most are retirees, and do everything from making lunches (esp. for Chemo patients) to fund raising, and also transporting patients. If there are angels living amongst us, then they're these guys.
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| NO! Not those guys ... |
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| ... these guys! |
For $5 (at the moment) a pop, they will come to your house at a pre-arranged time, pick you up from your front door, take you to the hospital in time for your treatment, and wait until you finish. Then whiz you home again.
I mean, friggin' hell - you can barely get a taxi flag-fall for $5! If I'd used a taxi it would have cost me about $50 a round-trip. And the volunteers are the nicest people.
3. THE WAITING ROOM
Once you're in there, you place your little appointment card on the bench of the nurses' station so that the radiotherapists can come and pick it up and know that you've arrived and are ready and raring to go! Well, most days you will be ...
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| Inside the card is your name & patient number, and you can also fill in your appointment times. |
Every week, around Wednesday or Thursday they will give you a printout of the schedule for the coming week. They try and keep the times reasonably consistent, but not always. If there is some reason that you absolutely can't make it to an appointment time on a particular day, give them as much notice as soon as possible and they'll see what they can do.
Like anything, mostly the system runs on time but occasionally it doesn't. Don't freak out if things are running behind schedule - shit happens! Most of the time you'll be in and outta there pretty fast, but be prepared for the occasional hiccup. You can use your mobile phone whilst in the waiting room. Or bring a book, or tablet computer - very popular in waiting rooms these days. Like all waiting rooms there are magazines which for most part suck (well, for a geek like me anyway - who gives a toss if baby Prince George can fart "God Save the Queen"?) and a TV above the obligatory fish-tank. There are some toys for the kiddies and you can even do a jigsaw puzzle while you wait.
Don't leave the waiting area, or if you need to, tell one of the nurses. One of the radiotherapists will be out soon enough to call your name.
They'll ask you, for hygiene purposes, to remove your shoes and put on some highly swish little surgical booties.
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| Soon to be seen at all the fashionable red carpet events. |
4. HANNIBAL LECTER STOLE MY MASK
One of the main tricks with radiotherapy treatment is to get the machine's radiation beam to hit the same spot every time, whilst doing minimal damage to the surrounding tissues. For patients undergoing head and neck radiotherapy, this means total immobilisation of your head and shoulders in just the right position, every time. (This is where it can be a problem for people with claustrophobia, or so I'm told.)
They do this with the use of a perfectly fitting moulded Radiotherapy Mask, and also a moulded pillow.
About 2 weeks before your radiotherapy begins, you'll be asked to come in and spend some quality time in what they call the Simulation Room. It's set up exactly like one of the treatment rooms, except instead of the Linear Accelerator machine, they have a CAT scanner. Here they will make the pillow and The Mask for you.
They do this by getting you to lie on this light blue pillow which is dampened to allow it to be moulded. They'll get the precise angle at which they want your head and neck to lie, and then press your head down into the pillow until it sets. Then it comes time for the fitting of the mask.
The mask is made of some sort of composite plastic mesh which fits across your face, neck and shoulders, and ends in large tabs which can be clicked down into position on the radiotherapy table forcing your head and neck to lie at the precise angle they want - making you unable to move.
During the fitting, the mask is also made flexible and malleable and they will keep pressing it down onto your head until they have it just right. Within a few minutes it dries out and becomes fixed. In truth I found this the most uncomfortable part of the whole radiotherapy process.
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| A very tight fit when locked down. Note the angle of my head. |
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| Me holding up my radiotherapy mask in front of LA1. |
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| The mask is fitted into place over my head. |
As mentioned above, as Radiotherapy goes on, a certain amount of burning sets into the tissue surrounding the target area. The bolus presses against this as well, and in my case that was getting increasingly painful. Thus the need to take my pain killers before coming into hospital to make sure that I had some relief by the time treatment started.
The radiotherapists adjusted it from time to time to make sure it both had full contact with my skin, and for comfort, but in the end, let's just say, I was friggin' glad when the whole thing was over. Pain rarely brings me to tears - but in the this case I was coming close.
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| Then the mask is snapped down into place on the treatment table. Note the blue moulded pillow under my head. |
5. TREATMENT TIME
Once the mask is locked down the radiotherapists press a few buttons and the treatment table starts to slide along into the machine, like a roast going into an oven. There they use some laser guides to take some measurements and make sure that your head is set at the right angle. Mine was always "90.5," (whatever that number was), or close enough that the radiotherapists would be satisfied.
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| Ready to go! |
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| Welcome to the Loftus Street House of Bondage and Light Perversion. |
The machine above you rotates and buzzes. You're never totally sure when the radiation beam is switched on or off. The only time I could be sure was when they were targetting the area closer to my eyeball.
Back in 1968, during the first manned trip to the moon by Apollo 8, the astronauts noted that they would get occasional random flashes in their vision, even with their eyes shut. They didn't realise then that cosmic and solar radiation was occasionally hitting their retina and inducing the little flashes.
Similarly during treatment, when the radiation beam was targetted just so, I too would get some scattering of radiation hitting the back of my eye and causing a set of green flashes in my right peripheral vision, even though my eyes were closed. I asked the radiotherapists once if the green flashing was being caused by some sort of green targetting laser, or induced by the radiation. They confirmed the latter. It only lasted a few seconds until the beam moved on.
I'm not sure that I liked the idea that scattered radiation was hitting my eyeball, but I knew of the link to the Astronauts, and thought that it was kind of cool to experience that anyway. Again, other patients may not experience it all.
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| I can always dream. |
6. AND YOU'RE DONE!
"Done like a dinner," as me old Mum used to say, assuming that she had a Giga Electron-Volt microwave oven and a manky cancerous roast.
That would be confirmed by the pitter-patter of the feet of the little radiotherapy elves as they re-entered the machine room and started to unclip the mask from the table. Gently they would pull it off and help you back into a seated position. It would often take me a few seconds to get my equilibrium back and stop feeling a little light-headed (or giddy with relief perhaps?)
You re-dress, give them a cheery wave and a hearty "Thanks ... see you guys tomorrow." They smile and nod. Possibly as soon as you leave they would rub their hands with glee and declare "Righto - next Victim! Mmmawhahahahahaha!" Evil little elves.
Jokes aside, they seemed very dedicated to their work and your comfort. Sometimes they would have a student or visiting doctor who wanted to check out the amazing work they were doing to possibly one of the worst tumours that they had ever seen. They said to me that it was gratifying to work on such an obvious external tumour and see the results week-by-week. I didn't disagree.
For most people that would be it for the day. Their family member, friend, bus or volunteer driver would take them home. Or they'd bugger off to the pub down the road.
In my case it was sometimes a longer wait as I had to have all of my dressings re-done by the oncology nurses, when they weren't busy. Sometimes they had horror days and I'd have to sit there for an hour or more waiting. Most of the time they would grab me within a few minutes.
Meanwhile my Cancer Carer Driver had probably died of boredom. No no - they were very patient people. Sometimes if they lived close enough and knew that I would be a while, they would give me their mobile number and bugger off home, or perhaps to pick up someone else. I'd call them when I was ready.
That was it for the day, and the next day it would start all over again. Not everyone who undergoes radiotherapy has it every day or for so many weeks, but this is common in head and neck patients.
7. AT HOME AGAIN
Once home, sometimes I would nap. Indeed as time and the radiotherapy wore on it became more and more essential.
I had one volunteer driver who had also been through radiotherapy. He was trying to run a business at the time and thought that he would just pop into the hospital for 20 or 30 minutes it would take, and then back off to work again. Then as the weeks wore on he found he would have to go home for a little nanna-nap, which became longer and longer until it ate up all of his afternoons. He had to totally re-arrange his business dealings.
For me an afternoon nap isn't a quick half-an-hours' doze. It is usually in the vicinity of 3 hours, and I still sleep through at night too. It seems like it wastes a lot of your day, but screw you Father Time!
Mother Nature is in the driver's seat and giving you what your body needs - lots of healing rest.
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