External Radiation Treatment for Cancer

External Radiation Treatment for Cancer

An external radiation treatment for cancer is a lot less scary if you know what to expect. Read on to find out what happens before, during, and after an external radiation treatment for cancer.

Before Your Treatment
Before your treatment, you will have a fairly lengthy (2 to 3 hours) appointment with your radiation oncologist and a radiation therapist or two. At the appointment, you will do a lot of lying around on a CT scan table while the radiation oncologist gives directions to the radiation therapist on how to position your body and where to draw big black (or blue, red, orange...really, any color the oncologist is partial to) marks on your body.

Alternatively, your radiation oncologist may give you tiny dot tattoos instead of drawing on you with permanent markers. Regardless of whether the marks are made with markers or tattoos, they are made so that when you receive the radiation treatment for cancer, the radiation therapist can line your body up with the radiation beams so that the beams hit you in exactly the same place every time they zap you.

At this initial appointment, they may also create forms and / or a mask that will be used during your treatment. The purpose of the forms and mask are to help the radiation therapist position your body in the same position prior to each radiation treatment.

The whole idea behind this initial appointment is:

To determine the exact location(s) on your body where the radiation beams will be targeted,

And to figure out the best way to position your body so that every time you are exposed to the radiation beams, they hit you in these targeted locations.

The hardest part about this initial appointment is that it is extremely boring; the radiation oncologist and assisting radiation therapist have a lot to get done during the time they have with you, so there is usually little to no small talk with you involved. And unlike chemo treatments, you can't read, watch TV, or engage in activity that might make the time go by faster. Unless you're an accomplished day-dreamer, you're out of luck.

The Radiation Treatment
You will most likely be assigned an appointment time that you will have to show up for every weekday, Monday through Friday, for a number of days. Each of my two rounds of radiation involved 20 consecutive days (excluding weekends). In order for the treatment to be as effective as possible, you cannot miss a single appointment - so don't go making plans for any three-day weekends in the middle of your radiation treatment.

When you get to the treament, you will probably have to put on a hosital robe (but you may be able to keep your pants or skirt on, depending on where you are receiving the radiation). You'll wander down to the radiation "chamber", which will have a lot of really big, impressive-looking computers and instruments sitting right outside of it. A radiation therapist will greet you, lead you into the radiation chamber, help you lie down on the narrow table, place your forms and / or mask in their respective locations, and move your body around a bit so that you are lined up correctly with the radiation machine.

The radiation therapist will leave the chamber as soon as he or she is satisfied with how things are lining up - and this means that you cannot move a muscle until the treatment is over. If you move, the radiation therapist will have to come back into the chamber and realign your body with the machine. Obviously, you are welcome to breathe normally, but, really, think of this as an exercise in patience and don't move a muscle.

You won't feel anything when you're actually receiving the radiation treatment. There will be a loud buzzing noise that will go on and off, but if it weren't for the noise, you would have no idea you were being given a radiation treatment for cancer. The radiation therapist may come in between the buzzes and reposition your body and / or the forms. Before you know it, the radiation therapist will send you on your way to change back into your clothes, and that's it!

A radiation treatment for cancer is really a non-event - the worst part about it the monotony of returning everyday for 20 (or so) days.

Radiation Therapy Side Effects
While undergoing treatment, you may experience some radiation therapy side effects like dry skin, swelling (of the body parts affected by the radiation treatments), and fatigue.

Your radiation oncologist will let you know what symptoms to look out for and how to treat them.

About a month after you have finished the radiation treatment for cancer, you will have a scan (CT or PET) to see how effective the radiation was in killing cancer cells. Your radiation oncologist will go over the results of the scan with you.

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