It’s more of a gray area

I met with my radiation oncologist and we talked about my progress. The problem I had been experiencing with painful urination went away just a couple of days prior to my appointment. He said that painful urination is a typical side effect from radiation treatment to the pelvis and that most of the time it’s only temporary and just lasts a few days/weeks. He said that most of the apoptosis (cell death) within the tumor should take place in the few weeks following treatment. He wanted to schedule another PET scan about a week or so prior to surgery to see just how much of the tumor was left. He thought that I would have very good response and would not be surprised if the tumor had shrunk by half. I asked him how rads I received with each dose of radiation. He said that the scale was measured in grays (gy) instead rads and that I had been receiving a dose of 1.8 gy with each treatment and the form of radiation was just below that of gamma waves on the spectrum.