Erik MH:

blog entries: orig. on PostHope

The radi­ation lab

This actu­ally is the radi­ation machine. I lie on the bed (left), which is rolled into place. I’m pretty sure that the low cen­ter “draw­er” extends out when it’s in oper­a­tion, and that that’s what orbits around my body dur­ing the two- to three-minute session.…

**UPDATE 2017-09-14: No, I had it com­pletely wrong! …

  

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Sam

‘But you’ve left out one of the chief char­ac­ters: Sam­wise the stout­hearted. “I want to hear more about Sam, dad. Why didn’t they put in more of his talk, dad? That’s what I like, it makes me laugh. And Frodo wouldn’t have got far without Sam, would he, dad?”’ — The Lord of the Rings, §4.08.065

  

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A ques­tion of logistics

We really have the best of both worlds, logistically.

All of the chemo­ther­apy and radi­ation ther­apy can (and will) be done at the Cent­ral Ver­mont Med­ic­al Cen­ter near Mont­pe­li­er — only 35 minutes from our house. And I’ll be able to drive myself to almost all of these appoint­ments myself. Yea! Unsur­pris­ingly, the hos­pit­al is small, com­fort­able, and friendly. Per­haps more sur­pris­ingly (giv­en its size) it’s quite up-to-date: no wor­ries about any­thing less than 2017 best practices.

Everything hav­ing to do with each sur­gery will be all the way down at Dart­mouth-Hitch­cock Med­ic­al Cen­ter.…

  

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“Walk­ing into Mordor”

In a nut­shell: I’ve been dia­gnosed with eso­pha­geal adeno­car­cinoma. It’s pretty big, but not huge, and oth­er than one lymph there is no sign of it hav­ing meta­thes­ized, so pro­gnos­is is good. Best-prac­tice treat­ment today in both North Amer­ica and Europe is a (prob­ably five-week) course of radi­ation ther­apy with a sup­port­ive batch of chemo-ther­apy which acts syn­er­gist­ic­ally with the radi­ation. This might com­pletely erad­ic­ate the tumor, but wheth­er it does or not, long-term sur­viv­al stat­ist­ics dic­tate that much of the lower eso­phag­us and upper stom­ach then be removed surgically.

I could be eat­ing (gently) again by Thanksgiving.

  

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