44 sessions of EBRT

This helped me...Best wishes!
https://www.nutrition.va.gov/NUTRITION/docs/Oncology/ProstateCancerandTipsforRadiationTherapyJuly2026.pdf

I used to drink a 16 ounce bottle of water as I was driving to the facility. Took me about 15 minutes to get there and I would always have to sit and wait at least 15 or 20 minutes. That seemed to work well. I’ve had about 40 sessions and only had one time when they had to have me drink more water.

My husband is finishing his VMAT RT (about 35 sessions) and it is like a job indeed.

He has no problem keeping routine of empty bowels and full bladder but still RT is time consuming and cumbersome process - not fun at all. He has amazing team and great young RO who is meeting with him every week. He even met young interns and many physicists, and everybody is so warm and welcoming, everybody from valet parking guys to receptionists to nurses to RT techs - but still, it is just boring and tedious process. Granted - he has to drive for an hour to and than an hour back from the hospital (in "good traffic" days), so it takes the whole morning to go through "motions" and he comes back around 2 pm.

He is having salvage RT after RP and RP was a walk in a park comparing to this. BUT, he is grateful that he has just some minor side effects and those appeared just this last couple of days (some urinary urgency). He had extensive RT field treated with boosts to the nodes.

The team in this hospital was not strict about diet and told him not to make major changes since it can upset GI system and make things worse. He was just advised to avoid gassy food (which meant food that was gassy "for him" - everybody has different GI system), so I think that it was good advise. My husband avoided only beans and cabbage family (broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, etc.).

He is very "regular" since we eat a lot of veggies and fruits and he had BM every morning as he always did , had oatmeal for breakfast, go for 3 mile fast walk, come back home , take a shower and drive to RT session. During driving he sipped water and by the time he was there his bladder was full. He would than have RT which for VMAT is about just 4 min long (this was the easiest part) and than would shuffle-run to the bathroom, pee and go for "step exercising" which was constituted of climbing hospital stairs up and down to promote oxygenation (that helps with killing off cancer cells ).

As a supportive nutritional part he ate home made chicken soup every day, had whey protein shake, probiotics, added inulin fiber to his routine to protect guts and kept hydrated. His RO was constantly praising him for having truly empty bowels and full bladder. Those last couple of days full bladder was tricky since he developed urgency and he feels like bladder is very full when it is not : (, but techs in his RT team are very flexible and supportive and he has only 2 more sessions to endure (praise the Lord 🧿) and it will finally be over.

So my advise is - make RT appointments that are always at the same time of the day and according to your personal body biorhythm and make minor changes in your diet, just eliminate gas producing items (ones that are gassy for you). Take probiotics, inulin fiber (if it is not gas producing for you), eat broths and keep well hydrated. Don't forget to exercise - it helps in many ways.

Wishing you the best of luck with RT and may it eradicate your PC 100 % and forever 🍀✨

Other than hypofractionation (28 sessions), like Jeff I would drink 24oz on way to treatment. Empty rectum was harder at first; however, RT usually will loosen up the stool. After a few weeks it got much easier.

44 sessions? Wow. I only had 20 which makes me think now that it wasn't enough. It was too easy as well. Zero effects during or after. Prep was not an issue either. I did all the sessions at 5PM daily.
It's been over a year.

Good luck, you are getting lots of advice. Filling bladder seems to be the easy part. The empty bowels sounds like the hard part, is like completely empty like when getting a colonoscopy? I don't seem to have a daily time, just when I feel like it, no set time a day. Yep, that would be difficult for me! Are they putting a spacer in you, I am assuming you still have your prostate. They can put a spacer in without a prostate, but few do it and it takes skill and there are some it don't work for after PR. Skilled surgeon to determine if spacer possible after PR.
One other thought doesn't IMRT do a better job of shaping the beam?? I don't know, but others on here would know, but I thought IMRT did better at pin pointing than EBRT. I sure if I wrong one of these guys will correct me and that is good as I am new at this.

@diverjer If I'm not mistaken IMRT and SBRT are EBRT. I'm having IMRT low dose. Treating seminal vesicle and lymph nodes. It's all new to me.

@stew80 That's what I said. Wow! I was very surprised at the number of treatments. Gleason 8 grade group 4. Decipher.47 3 cores positive out of 15. Pet scan showed containment within the prostate. I would like to think that should zap everything.

EBRT is the general method of aiming radiation from outside the body, while IMRT and SBRT are specific, advanced techniques that shape and focus the radiation beams differently. I think IMRT and SBRT are more advanced and accurate. For some reason SBRT can be done in like 5 sessions and IMRT is maybe 40. I would guess SBRT uses high dose of radiation and may be more accurate and used for small area. But as said I am new to all this and learning as may need radiation depending on how PSA does after prostatectomy.

@stew80 You probably had a Biologically Equivalent Dose (BED). 3Gys x 20, 2.5Gys x 28, 2Gys x 38, or 1.8Gys x 44 are all about the same. Short term side effects are higher with fewer treatments at higher doses. Lucky that you had none.