Dr. Chi Lin

If you can tolerate whole brain and spine radiation therapy, it may help you control disease. If not, radiation to T1-4 may help relieve some symptoms too. I hope that you can dance with your son at his wedding.

Radiation therapy includes external beam radiation and internal radiation. The external radiation therapy is to have radiation beams made by a machine. When we turn the machine on, the machine will deliver the beam and will radiate the site we want it to deliver radiation to. Patients receiving this kind of radiation will not be radioactive. The internal radiation is to have many little radioactive seeds implanted in the patient's prostate. The seeds will irradiate the patient's probate internally until the radioactivity is gone. So, patients with those seeds inside will be radioactive for sometimes. No kids should be arround them.

Acute radiation side effects normally go away gradually within a month from the end of the treatment.

Any invasive procedure such as extraction of teeth may induce necrosis of jaw if the patient has received radiation therapy over 50 Gy to the area within 2 years.

You may be able to drive yourself at the beginning. But you may feel more fatigued and need someone to drive you towards the end of the treatment.

Thank you for your questions. Well designed studies have shown that concurrent chemotherapy and radiation therapy will improve not only local control but also survivals in patients with limited stage small cell lung cancer. If you have a good response to chemoradiation, you will also benefit from a course of prophylactic whole brain radiation therapy.