Boston appointment

Rachel had an appointment with her radiation oncologists down in Boston yesterday. They went over how she’s been feeling since surgery and asked about any long-term effects she’s experiencing from either the previous radiation or chemo (so far just lingering ringing in her ears from one of the chemos and still some numbness in her chest and abdomen from the tumor itself compressing the spinal cord before it was discovered and removed back in November of last year.) They also went over the risks of radiation again, since it’s been a while since she last had radiation (June of this year.) In addition to the skin irritation that’s almost certain to happen, there’s also risk of lung damage (because the location of her tumor was near her lungs) and secondary cancer (ironically, the most common cancer caused by radiation is the cancer she’s being treated for: osteosarcoma.) Their biggest concern is possible damage to her spinal cord. The amount of radiation she’s had so far (5 weeks, or 45 Gy, for those of you who know about radiation unit measurements) has been deemed to be safe for your spinal cord. Above that poses a much higher risk, but with osteosarcoma, the risk of not doing the higher dose (over 60 Gy) is worse. The doctors ordered an MRI so that they can be sure they know exactly where the spinal cord is so they can minimize the risk of damage during radiation, since she hasn’t had one yet post-surgery. We just heard today that this is scheduled for this Saturday (here in Maine.)

On a lighter note, we headed to Boston early yesterday so that we could spend some time at the aquarium before her appointment. We also tried out the famous Legal Sea Foods for lunch (highly recommend, by the way.)