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Quote of the Day:

Your faithfulness makes you trustworthy to God.
- Edwin Louis Cole
Aug 29

IMRT Brain Tumor Radiation Treatment Pictures

Radiation 9 Comments »

For those of you who may wonder what it is like to undergo radiation treatment, I had the radiation technicians take some photographs for me. For anyone about to go through this – it looks frightening but you get used to it. For others who are curious, the mesh “mask” you see is to keep my head still. It is uncomfortable but you get used to it after using it 5 days a week for so many weeks. It fits firmly to every contour of my face and I cannot make any movements in my face at all once it is on – even if I wanted to smile I couldn’t! When you go through what is called the Radiation Simulation they fit this – it’s a warm wax mask that is more or less “melted” to your face and then carefully contoured.  I’m going to keep the mask when radiation is completed for Halloween to scare all of the children in the neighborhood.  Kidding.  :-)

The large disc you see is part of the linear particle accelerator. Its responsibility in this application is to deliver the radiation to my brain tumor. As you may recall, I am using IMRT radiation which is fairly cutting edge. Of course, I cannot tell you how the radiation experience is for other types of cancers but the same types of machines are used – the orientation of the body is going to be potentially different based on the location of the cancer, etc.

All in all I am doing well – I’m feeling much more up lately and my energy level is good. At this point I think I am much more acclimated to the radiation and the chemo than I have been through the entire process. Side effects are minimal. I thank God for all of this. I will be heading to work next Tuesday for the first time since surgery and am looking forward to it. I will put it the time I can but plan to work every day. Here are the pictures:

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Aug 22

Update – Treatment 17 of 33

Chemotherapy 4 Comments »

I have completed radiation treatment 17 of 33 so I am officially more than halfway through this initial course of therapy. Of course the chemo is daily as I have mentioned. Same side effects as I have mentioned but they are getting better. The hair loss is new! Everywhere the beams enter my head (they refer to them as “ports”), I am losing my hair. Right now, the right side of my head, in a patchy spot about 4″x4″ is bald. Oh well! I really don’t care. Throw on a cap and go. The fatigue is getting a bit better as I’m out and walking and keeping as active as I can. Weight-wise I’m maintaining pretty well – staying right around 170# which is the right weight for me. Labs are coming back fine in terms of red blood cell count as well. The primary concern there is that chemo has a tendency to drive that count down. Since red blood cells are what carry oxygen from your lungs to the rest of your body, this can drive your fatigue up much much further if it dips. Mine is looking fine. Much of this I just attribute to nutrition and the supplements I am taking. I will list them here in another post but there are quite a few – Omega 3s, anti-oxidants and some others that are key for brain tumors.

I also received a copy of the results from my 1p/19q gene deletion test – it was really academic. This is just a test that is predictive of how effective certain chemotherapy will be in some cases depending upon how this test comes back – it also can help to confirm the original pathology. In my case, there was a “deletion” of the 1p chromosome but not the 19q chromosome. Current therapy is perfect and it confirms the tumor type identified in pathology – an oligoastrocytoma. If both chromosomes were deleted, the tumor would have to be strongly looked at as an oligoendroglioma which has a much more favorable prognosis. Anyway, as I mentioned it’s academic really and just another data point.

Mom and Keegan are doing well. He’s finally starting to settle down a bit at night. He was doing what all newborns do and had his days and nights mixed up. He still does to some extent but he’s waking up twice now most of the time – around 12:30 and again at 4:30 or so after being fed at 9:30pm so Rach is doing a bit better. He was staying awake until midnight every night, then up every 3 hours, etc. etc.

Rachael and I are continuing to pray every day about all of this and just trying to take things as they come. It is tempting to go far ahead and project, and to some extent you have to be strategic and think about the future but there is a difference between being strategic and dwelling on what is to come. The latter is not a place to be! Aidan is doing well too and has been such a trooper through all of this. With so many changes facing him, he has adapted so well – and kids are so adaptable. It’s amazing. He’s a great little boy with a soft heart – he tries to take care of his little brother when he’s crying by giving him little blankets and his prized possession, a small giraffe he’s had since he was about a year old! It’s pretty cool. Aidan will start at Adventure Christian in about two weeks for a transitional kindergarten class for just this year then it’s off to kindergarten the following year. He has the normal trepidation that most kids do before a new change comes. He was so used to his preschool but as he understood that none of his other friends would be there this year either, he’s becoming more comfortable with everything.

More to come soon. I will be getting all of this out to UCSF when it’s done – the MRI at the end of radiation, their recommended treatment plan, etc. There is still something inside of me that says Dr. Berger can resect this tumor and if he can and I won’t be facing major neuro deficits, I may pull the trigger.

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Aug 10

Brain Tumor Treatment Update

Brain-Surgery 2 Comments »

I just wanted to take a moment and provide a quick update on my treatment. I am concluding my second week of radiation and chemotherapy today. Thus far, I’m happy with the progress in terms of side effects. I won’t know how effective this treatment is until after its conclusion when an MRI will be done. At that point in time, I will assess my situation – more in a minute.

In terms of side effects, I’m very happy that I’ve been spared the serious side effects that most complain about with regard to chemotherapy. Nausea and vomiting are the primary complaints and I haven’t had any of that- just a tinge of nausea in the morning so the anti-nausea med Zofran is doing its job. The main complaint I have is fatigue. This is a side effect of both the chemotherapy and radiation. I haven’t had any hair loss yet from the radiation but that will come – who cares. :-) It will be patchy because the beams are entering my brain from multiple angles but that is ok. Probably week 4-5 it will come and obviously this is the least of my concerns.

The other objective I am working is getting my biopsy samples over to the UCSF Brain Tumor Center. You may recall, Dr. Mitchel Berger, the Chief of the Neurosurgery Department at UCSF is the doctor who saw what no one else did – that my tumor was most likely higher grade and that I should not sit on this. I feel that having my pathology run through their channel is good. I don’t expect it to come back as a “lower” grade, nor do I expect it to be a GBM (grade 4 glioma, or glioblastoma multiforme) but I want their analysis and also want my tissue samples run through their pipeline so if I decide to avail myself to their services (surgery) later, I’m all set up. The safest path is to drive there and hand carry the slides. After all, this is my brain tissue and getting it wasn’t exactly easy! So, I will leave sometime next week early in the AM and drop it there so I can be back in downtown Sacramento by Noon for my regular radiation appt. at 12:30pm. When they are done, I will go pick it up in a similar fashion. Yes, I would use FedEx but that truck could also end up in a river. Highly unlikely but I’m not willing to take the chance.

So, I get 2 days off from radiation which I look forward to. I am also starting to position for my return to work which will most likely be a telecommute scenario for the first several weeks – 5 days a week. Then I will start going in 2-3 days a week and ease back into things. I need to get normalcy and regain what I love in life professionally. My family is #1 but I’m climbing the walls! My blog here has received some nice development though! :-) So, it will be good to get rolling on guiding the IT department again and meeting every Monday with the executive staff and doing what I enjoy doing.

That is all for now. I have also started playing music again and started writing a new song. More to come on that. It’s upbeat and the music is coming along. I have some great thoughts about the lyrical direction I want to take.

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Aug 04

Time to Write

Musical Pursuits No Comments »

I’ve been thinking about this lately – really over the past 24 hours or so. I haven’t written a song since “Angels of the Night” in mid-May which was the last track I added to River of Faith. That song is probably the one cut that has grown on me the most of all the songs I wrote for the album, probably that song and “The Messenger”. Anyway, since everything cranked up here with my treatment, and I had the album wrapped up about the time my surgery was scheduled (in fact, the cdbaby.com site was established two days prior to my surgery on June 29th), I haven’t even played a note, wrote a word down in my lyric tablet or had the notion to write a song. Part of this certainly is what happens after completing a project – there is a lull. However, a significant part of this is just being emotionally drained by what is going on in my life right now.

Today, however, I’ve been looking over at my studio equipment and thinking that I need to play – I need to write. As I type this, I’m in my studio and I believe that I’ve taken enough time away. And it’s not writing into a project, it’s writing some songs to get out what I need to – not really any different than what I did with the River of Faith album. So, I think I will fire everything up and just play the piano for starters – just stream of consciousness. I may not even write songs right now, but playing has a certain therapeutic value. It’s been over a month since I’ve touched anything in my studio – and I don’t blame myself what with the gravity of what is happening right now, but it’s time to get back to what I enjoy. The more normalcy I can inject into my life in the midst of the madness, the better! Slowly, I’m getting there…

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Aug 01

Blog Status/Focus

Blog No Comments »

I wanted to provide a short explanation as to the status and shift in focus of my blog, particularly for those that my not have visited for awhile. Many of you have noticed that the focus has shifted to a large degree to my fight against a primary brain tumor. As such, I am using my blog to keep everyone informed of status through surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, etc. I will obviously still be posting information related to my music and other topics related to music, the original focus of the blog, but given the importance of this situation in my life and the ease of information dissemination via a blog, it all makes sense to leverage the medium for this purpose.

Best Regards,

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