Radiation, Chemo, and Another MRI - December 15, 2010

We went in this morning not really knowing how everything was going to play out. As it turned out, the first thing they did was to make a mold of Pete's legs and he had some "dots" tattooed on his back to help them direct the concentrated beam of radiation. We met with Dr S4 and he gave Pete a schedule for the rest of the treatments, 14 in all, weekdays, except Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. Normally, they would not begin radiation for a couple of days, but they scheduled his first session for 5:15 this evening.

That taken care of we went up to the 11th floor to Dr R's office. He went over the MRI report of the spine and showed us on his computer where the lesion is, between L1 and L2. He said that it is just below the spinal chord, and that's a good thing. There was mention in the report of the possibility of another lesion located in the area of the brain stem, but this scan did not go up far enough to be able to see the complete area. Pete will have an MRI of his brain on Friday so we'll have to wait to learn more about that. Dr R also discussed starting chemo on Monday. He mentioned a number of different drugs that he is considering for Pete among which were Cisplatin and a couple of other Platinum based drugs, as well as Methotrexate and Pralatrexate (I think that was it), and a few more that I can't recall.

He also spoke about the possibility of doing a spinal tap and injecting drugs directly into the spinal column. I may be oversimplifying the explanation, but I think of it as the molecules of most cancer-fighting drugs being too large to pass through the blood-brain barrier and so are useless in combating cancers of the brain when administered through normal IV. Platinum-based drugs such as Cisplatin do have the ability to cross the barrier.

After we left Dr R, Pete and I left the city and drove through the Lincoln Tunnel to meet up with a friend of Pete's. She has a condo in West New York and offered to let us stay there during his radiation treatments. We had spoken to the social worker at NYU about staying at Hope Lodge, but they don't have a room available for the entire period. The condo will be perfect; it's only about 10 minutes to the Lincoln and then a straight drive up 34th street across town to NYUCI.

We got back to the cancer center and walked to a pizza shop less than 2 blocks away from the hospital to grab something to eat. We finished there and walked back in plenty of time for Pete's first radiation treatment. They called him in around 5:30. It lasted about a half hour but he was told that subsequent treatments will most likely be about half that.

Since we had no idea when Pete would actually be finished we couldn't call ahead for the valet service to bring the car around so it was close to 6:30 when we got into the car. The traffic was pretty heavy on the ride home so it was close to 9 by the time we got in.

I started this last night (Wednesday), but my brain was pretty fried so I decided to finish it today. His treatment is scheduled for 5 PM this evening (Thursday).