![[IMAGE: Bill Dietrich]](http://old.seattletimes.com/special/trinity/art/dietrichmug.jpg)
BY BILL DIETRICH
ALONE IN A DIMLY LIT,
lead-lined room, lying on a metal table in
a
humiliatingly immodest gown, I listened to the buzz of a
10-million-electron-volt
linear accelerator as gamma rays passed through my midsection.
I was one of more than half a million new
American cancer patients who
relied on nuclear radiation in 1994 to prolong our lives.
The buzz lasted half a minute to a minute,
leaving a vague
tingling
sensation. The tingling was so subtle that it might have been
imaginary, except
that other patients report it too. By design the radiation was to
disrupt my
cells, both healthy ones and potentially cancerous ones.
The theory is that the healthy ones will repair
themselves while
the
cancerous ones -- if any even exist in my lymph nodes -- will die.
Surgery had already removed a seminoma -- a tumor
of the
testicle. Radiation
was designed to kill any cancerous cells that had spread.
"Seminoma cancer cells are very
fragile," explained
Dr. Paul
Herstein, the Group Health radiologist who directed my treatment.
If I had had a
carcinoma, a more common and malignant tumor, I might have
received twice as much
radiation.
Even so, after 15 treatments I had received the
equivalent of
about 27,000
chest X-rays.
After each treatment I could drive home without
a problem, but
because the
radiation was aimed at my gut I spent much of each evening
experiencing a bit of
radiation sickness: nausea and sometimes vomiting.
The path of the beam was mapped by tiny dots
tattooed on my
belly, and
later more visibly by a swath where my body hair temporarily fell
out.
In deciding to submit to radiation, I played
percentages. The
treatment
might have been unnecessary after surgery, and there was a remote
chance it could
even trigger new cancer. But statistically my chances of a
complete cure were
higher if I used radiation as well.
Nuclear medicine is the flip side of the atomic
coin. Worldwide,
far more
people have probably been saved by anti-cancer radiation
treatments, diagnostic
radioactive tests and X-ray examinations than were killed at
Hiroshima, Nagasaki,
Chernobyl and by atmospheric fallout.
I was 42 when the disease was found last summer,
meaning I was
unlucky
enough to have contracted cancer well below the median age of
diagnosis, about 65.
My testicular cancer is also fairly rare: Only one in 18,000
American males will
get the disease this year. There is no known environmental cause.
On the other hand, it is one of the most
treatable of all
cancers.
Quick surgery gave me an 85 percent chance of a
cure. Radiation
boosted
that chance to as near-certain as any cancer patient can get.
Microscopic examination of my intestine would
probably reveal
minor damage
to healthy tissue from the radiation, but not enough to have any
noticeable effect
on my health.
The beam is generated by accelerated electrons
that hit a
tungsten target
and become high-energy gamma rays. It is powerful enough to pass
through the
table, my back and body. A lead shield kept the beam from
continuing into the gift
shop on the floor overhead.
Herstein has not kept score, but one of his
medical-school
professors told
his students he had prolonged the lives of 300 people with
radiation
treatments.
At this writing, I appear to be another success
story.
Certainly, it gives one a different perspective.
I got more than
a million
times as much radiation at Group Health Hospital as I did visiting
power plants,
plutonium vaults and bomb craters researching these stories.
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