Stanford bound

Just wanted to let everyone know we got an appointment set up for Cleve's cyberknife procedure down in the bay area to treat his brain lesions early next week. The cyberknife procedure is used to treat brain tumors less than 3cm in size and multiple tumors. The patient, Cleve will be fitted with a mesh mask and then put into a tube similar to an MRI tube where he will get re-scanned for accurate placement of the radiation rays. Several rays will enter his skull and meet at the desired, pin point location of the tumor. Because the rays are entering at several different locations,  the beams carry less radiation until they meet at the tumor, therefor there is less radiation damage to the brain as a whole, causing less side effects of standard, complete brain radiation. It has been so successful in fact that Stanford is starting to use it on other locations of the body for different tumors...definitely an up and coming procedure. We are remaining optimistic about this procedure since Cleve's tumors are millimeters rather than centimeters. Perhaps i'm being naive in my assumption that the smaller tumors will be easier to remove rather than the larger multi-centimeter ones. But once we get the brain tumors under control we will be heading down to Houston to MD Anderson for further systemic treatment. As always, while on these trips I will be updating the blog so stay tuned.