Day 153
I am constantly being misled by forums and testimonies from others. I was taught as someone in the health field to always study evidence based medicine. Studies are only significant when the study is over a long a period of time, a significant amount of subjects, and a control and trial group. With our recent good news about her mass shrinkage and radiation treatment. Jackie’s current treatment is going to be 36Gy (1Gy=100rads) over 18 days totaling 3600 rads. Of course, my personality always tries to find the wrong in every situation. I started reading other peoples' forums saying they had 2100 rads, 2600 rads, and 3000 rads. I started thinking why is Jackie receiving so much radiation and the specialist did not know what she was calculating. I thought my limited knowledge of radiation oncology would triumph her 16 years of experience. The forums consist of an international group of subjects with many different ages and staging of Hodgkin’s disease.
After a whole night of research with Jackie I did stumble on some reliable evidence based medicine studies. The first one came from Germany and stated that patients who had 2000 rads and 3000 rads all had very high prognosis rates. This study made me fall into more of a self validity. Then I found the U.S guidelines for treament of stage 2a Hodgkin’s. I found out that 4 cycles of ABVD and 3000-3600 rads were the best combined modality for treatment. Going to 3600 rads just insured beating this disease.
Reading forums are an addiction. Each posting is subjective, opinionated, and a non professional opinion. Everyone has very informative information that has to be taken with a grain of salt. Nothing beats the opinion of a specialist who has been trained to deal with disease. When in doubt go for a second opinion by another professional.