7 radiation treatments down, 18 to go

Hi All -
Rick has a radiation treatment every night at 6:30 - although often they run late. We get home at 7:30 and Rick eats a small dinner and then goes to bed. What a nightlife! The treatment is 12 minutes of radiation and takes about 20-25 minutes all together. Most of the people Rick talked to about radiation said that he would be very tired but otherwise ok. In Rick's particular situation, they are radiating the lung area and hit the stomach area (spleen and kidney too) for a long time and he has been very nauseous. He is taking medication to try to control that side effect. His Tucson surgeon, Jonathan Daniel, said by the end the radiation may also affect his esophagus and make it difficult to swallow. All unpleasant stuff - but as we all know, getting old isn't for wimps...add cancer treatment to that and you are really in a deep vat of nothing good. Rick keeps trying to find that Zen place that will carry him through the next few weeks of radiation and then the chemotherapy. I know he will travel this path in good mental balance - he's remarkable in his ability to do that. It's interesting how many people we talk with who have walked similar paths - cancer, surgery, radiation, chemotherapy. Then, life went on. It's a great vision and we cling to every successful story.

For those of you who are computer savvy - there was a tv show on last night called Boston Medical on ABC at 9:00 Tucson time. It's a reality show with multiple stories and one of them featured Rick's Boston surgeon, David Sugarbaker, and his Tucson surgeon, Jonathan Daniel (When JD was in Boston studying with Sugarbaker). If you go to the website you can watch a brief bit about a man with mesothelioma.

That's all for now. It's significantly hot here in Tucson. Significantly.