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Showing posts from October, 2019

Dr. Frankenstein, and other words of love for R.

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"Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful."  Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus This isn't my dear friend from my metastatic cancer support group; it is a stock photo of someone about to undergo cyberknife treatment, or maybe it's just a model (which is to say, in this case, a healthy-looking woman, with the suggestion of conventional attractiveness under that mask (certainly make-up) who seems to have all her hair), pretending to be such a person. Lung, breast, and skin cancer are the most common sources of metastases to the brain.  Chemotherapy usually doesn't, never?--learning as I go here--reach brain metastases because of the blood-brain barrier, which protects the brain from toxins (like, ha! chemotherapy drugs).  Cyberknife, a focused, highly-targeted radiosurgery and fractionated radiotherapy (I don't know, I'm not a doctor) is an improvement in how modern medicine delivers radiation to the brain.  Although that woman ab

Dr. Frankenstein, and other words of love for R.

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"Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful."  Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus This isn't my dear friend from my metastatic cancer support group; it is a stock photo of someone about to undergo cyberknife treatment, or maybe it's just a model (which is to say, in this case, a healthy-looking woman, with the suggestion of conventional attractiveness under that mask (certainly make-up) who seems to have all her hair), pretending to be such a person. Lung, breast, and skin cancer are the most common sources of metastases to the brain.  Chemotherapy usually doesn't, never?--learning as I go here--reach brain metastases because of the blood-brain barrier, which protects the brain from toxins (like, ha! chemotherapy drugs).  Cyberknife, a focused, highly-targeted radiosurgery and fractionated radiotherapy (I don't know, I'm not a doctor) is an improvement in how modern medicine delivers radiation to the brain.  Although that wom