Approaching the Finish Line

This week got off on a sour note. Gantry 1, the room to which Paul is assigned for treatment, was down all day Monday. We were told that it was down from Sunday evening until Tuesday AM. Treatment #31, originally scheduled for Monday at 9 AM, was finally received on Tuesday evening. This means that we are, at present, one day behind our target date for completion. The new "estimated" completion date is May 31. If any more sessions are missed, that date will slip by one day for each missed treatment.

This points out what we consider to be a problem in Loma Linda's delivery of proton treatment. If a gantry is down, they are unable to switch a patient to another gantry which is up and running. We've been told that there's a technical calibration issue involved. Loma Linda has been treating patients with proton radiation since 1991 so the equipment is old and goes down a bit too often. We were warned about this before we came but the frustration, when such an event occurs, is obviously high. They are supposed to tell patients, beforehand, that they can expect to miss, on average, four treatments during the entire treatment course. In our opinion, if they spent more time and money managing the equipment instead of managing patients' expectations, the level of patient satisfaction might be higher. Most patients just accept that they will experience missed days. We are not so forgiving ;-).

Anyway, after Monday, things got better. Gantry #1 finally came back up Tuesday morning but it was past Paul's scheduled time of 9 AM so he received treatment #31 on Tuesday evening instead. The rest of the week was relatively uneventful.

We are now in the single digits -- 34 down, 8 to go. For those of you who care to put in a "good word", please pray that there are no more outages so we can get out of here without having to spend the weekend of June 2-3 here.