Happy Easter

Today is a good day and Mary Jo is so pleased to have completed the third important phase of her treatment. Radiation oncology therapy was prescribed after being diagnosed with breast cancer last July although I am told the next several weeks are equally important post treatment.


When doctors talk about radiation oncology, on the biological level. What they are trying to do is kill a cancer cell and radiation is effective only in microscopic disease for the most part, and it’s not effective during the entire time period that the radiation is being given. The reason is, if you look at the biology of cancer, and you think about the dividing cell, the majority of a cancer mass does not divide at any one time, only about 10% of the cancer.

The clinical implication of this is that one sees the maximum effect of radiation, not during the time of radiation but within three to four weeks after a patient completed radiation therapy. The reason doctors give a small dose initially of 180 to 200 rads is that lower doses, the cell has the ability to repair the damage of the radiation and that is called the sublethal effect.

Mary Jo and I would like to wish all of you, our friends and family a very blessed and Happy Easter