When Corinne enters the room, she lies on the table and an uncomfortable, plastic brace is placed under her neck so that she properly presents herself to the x-rays. Then her mask is placed and latched down to the table. At that point, the radiation therapists rapidly and efficiently busy themselves lining up the table and the machine and Corinne so the radiation is exactly targeted. Corinne lies with her eyes and mouth pressed shut by the mask, hearing all of the activity, but having no idea what is going on. She is nervous. She is afraid of the radiation that’s set to damage her. She is very brave.

Before these treatments began, complicated physics calculations determined just the right dose – and placement – of radiation to do the job. Since she is scheduled for 18 sessions, each treatment delivers a 1/18 th fraction of the entire dose. As with chemotherapy, there is a maximum amount of radiation a person can safely receive. Radiation doses are computed carefully to avoid unnecessary damage to tissue and to conserve the patient’s ability to tolerate future treatments, if needed.

Over the two years after Linda’s breast cancer first appeared, she had two additional recurrences of cancer. In her first recurrence, four nasty brain tumors were aggressively treated with both chemotherapy and x-ray therapy. She also had a new procedure using the Gamma Knife, a one-time treatment which shoots scores of tiny radiation beams from different directions, all crossing on the tumor and killing it. These treatments, combined, apparently destroyed the four tumors. But, a year later when a different type of brain cancer appeared, Linda had reached her limit on chemotherapy and radiation. The new cancer was terribly aggressive. She could not be saved. She died.