radiation

No experience yet but I will have at 3PM tomorrow. Best wishes!

Proton beam does not have many sessions like IMRT. It is an intense beam like SBRT, though very different from it in how it works.

They also hit areas of the prostate bed with IMRT like salvage radiation for people that have had a prostatectomy.

I know a number of people that have had this radiation. Some people do have prostatitis and even problems with the rectum after radiation.. That is not the norm and the Rectal spacer is supposed to avoid that kind of problem.

There’s no way to predict what will happen to you.

I had 7+ weeks of salvage radiation to the prostate bed and had no problems at all. Had the radiation in the morning and went to work Right after. Never had any issues until five years later when I started having incontinence problems.

thanks jeff..I will say again.. you are very knowledgeable about this whole PC subject and it helps a great deal to hear the voice of exp on these many topics...and I am sure you inspire many...
I will keep posting about my PC journey and hope I can do the same..

@xahnegrey40 I had photon radiation but it was with the mridian machine which is one of two machines available (the other being the Elekta Unity) that have the bult in MRI. This means that what the doctor sees in real time (vs fused images from another source), they can treat. It also means the healthy tissue that is exposed is less with a machine that has a built in MRI than one that does not (2 mm margins vs 3-5 mm margins). I had 5 hypo-fractional treatments in February of 2023 and spaceoar.

@bens1
If your radiation works like everybody else’s, the doctor is not directly involved when you get your treatments. So the doctor isn’t going to see the fused images in real time. The people doing the treatment are the ones that see it.

Did you actually see your doctor, in the room where the radiation is controlled, while you were being treated? I know my doctor was never around when I was treated. The same is true with everybody else I’ve heard from having radiation.

@jeffmarc

I actually did see the doctor in there. I am not sure how long she stayed. The one day that she had another patient, there was another radiation oncologist in there as well.

The Meridian machine requires three people in there as a normal process as opposed to other machines which from what I understand requires two.

@jeffmarc Once I was positioned on the table, there was a doctor, not necessarily my doctor (though one time it was) who did a final review before the techs started the linear accelerator. I had SBRT so I guess because it was so few sessions absolute precision was required. I remember one day having to wait about 10 minutes because the doctor wasn't available.

@scottbeammeup
When I had SBRT radiation on my spine, my doctor was nowhere to be found when they did the actual treatment.