Getting ready for CyberKnife - a radiosurgery process and becoming a golden man!

Yesterday, I met Dr.Ajaikumar, who is the CEO of Health Care Global (HCG), the umbrella organization which owns Bangalore Institute of Oncology (BIO). Dr. Ajaikumar also heads the CyberKnife - the world's first non-invasive, whole-body, robotic radiosurgery system and is designed to treat tumors anywhere in the body with pin-point accuracy. During my meeting with Dr.Ajaikumar, we were accompanied by my Oncologist Dr.Niti Narang, Radiation Oncologist Dr.Kumara Swamy and Senior VP (Marketing) of CyberKnife, Mr.Tanjai Kapoor. The excerpts from our discussion with the experienced team of doctors here:

• since my disease is limited to only liver and a peri-portal lymph node near the liver, the radiosurgery has a higher probability of treating the tumors
• the tumor in the peri-portal lymph node is insignificant in the sense that it is currently less than 5 mm in size and is inactive. So, serious attempt will be made to target that tumor too during the radiosurgery.
  
• liver is one of the soft-tissues in the body and treating the tumors in the liver is a highly-skilled process. Also, since the tumors in the liver move with the respiration, it is more difficult to accurately trace the location of the tumors for any radiation based surgery technique. To do this accurately, hence, the CyberKnife technique involves implanting metallic markers made of gold in the liver so that the robot doing the radiosurgery can track and trace the location of the tumors accurately.
• the entire radiosurgery process may take between 3-5 days and I can be treated as an out-patient. This means that I need not get hospitalized!
• the radiosurgery process is completely painless and may take an hour per session per day.

After some discussion with my father, who came with me, I decided to go ahead for the radiosurgery as the next treatment. We then talked to Mr.Tanjai Kapoor regarding the financial issues of the process. A half-an hour discussion ensued and we were told that the entire treatment would cost us Rs.3.25 lakhs (this is after getting a good 20% discount!), which would include all the related scans and medicines. As a first step of the process, I was asked to get the gold-made metallic markers (called fiducials) implanted in my liver. This is a minor surgical process done under the local anesthesia. Yesterday afternoon, I went through this process of fiducials wherein three needles were used under local anesthesia to implant a total of five gold-metallic pieces in my liver. I suffered breathlessness for almost the entire day later because of this process. :( These markers would help the robotic system to accurately locate the tumors in the liver while treating them. The next step would be a planning scan to be done ten days later. Meanwhile, I was advised to be on a couple of antibiotics (both oral and IV) and on continuation of the oral chemotherapy tablets of Capecetabine. This planning scan would produce the images that would be for the robotic system to pick up and understand the structure and the location of the tumors during the actually surgery. So, finally, I have become now the golden man :) with gold-made metallic implants in my liver now! I trust the team of doctors in BIO for my treatment and I hope I would get the best possible treatment under their supervision! :D I hope with this radiosurgery, despite some suffering and difficulties, I would be free from the disease completely. :D