The good news is that it often takes longer to drive to the hospital and park than it does to receive your treatment. Most people are in and out of the department in 30 to 40 minutes. The majority of that time is actually spent in the waiting room. Patients are on the treatment machines for only about ten minutes daily. After this forty minutes, the rest of the day is yours.
Precision is the name of the game in radiation therapy, and millimeters count.
You can think of this as the planning day. This is when we determine exactly where we are going to treat and how we are going to arrange the beams to best approach the tumor. It starts with the patient lying on his or her stomach. The radiation oncologist will then carefully plan out the treatment fields. The fields are then outlined with ink marker on the skin in order to assure that the same region will be treated day after day.