Radiation Offers New Cures, and Ways to Do Harm

[Demeter]

Source: NYTimes

...Mr. Jerome-Parks died several weeks later in 2007. He was 43.

A New York City hospital treating him for tongue cancer had failed to detect a computer error that directed a linear accelerator to blast his brain stem and neck with errant beams of radiation. Not once, but on three consecutive days.

Soon after the accident, at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan, state health officials cautioned hospitals to be extra careful with linear accelerators, machines that generate beams of high-energy radiation.

But on the day of the warning, at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, a 32-year-old breast cancer patient named Alexandra Jn-Charles absorbed the first of 27 days of radiation overdoses, each three times the prescribed amount. A linear accelerator with a missing filter would burn a hole in her chest, leaving a gaping wound so painful that this mother of two young children considered suicide.

Ms. Jn-Charles and Mr. Jerome-Parks died a month apart. Both experienced the wonders and the brutality of radiation. It helped diagnose and treat their disease. It also inflicted unspeakable pain.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/health/24radiation.html?hp

[Bobbieo]

1. My husband died from radiation poisoning. He was in such horrible pain, the nurse told me they were

praying for him to die. A lung was burnt out and he his body was turning black. He died that night.

[Demeter]

2. Bobbieo, I Am So Sorry

I hoped that posting this would help prevent unnecessary pain and death. Unfortunately, the Moderator doesn't find it sufficiently compelling even though it's new today....I didn't want to stir up your grief, especially unnecessarily.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

3. I am so sorry

[Rosa Luxemburg]

4. My husband

Our HMO would not cover his radiation treatment at first but after much fighting with them he was able to go ahead with it. His treatment was delayed 8 weeks! Then they gave him too much radiation for base of the tongue cancer. His accessory nerves from the brain are damaged and is causing his neck and shoulder muscles to fail. It also affects his throat and has severe sleep apnea. He can't lie on his sholders as it is too painful.

[Liberation Angel]

5. My children's grandpa died after a massive dose when his drip malfunctioned

it put him into a coma and, although he regained consciousness, he never recovered.

This is a serious and underreported problem.

He was so optimistic that the treatment would help. Then it killed him.

It was horrible and we all still have not fully recovered from the trauma of it.

[Delphinus]

6. OMG.

This is freaking scary!

[JanusAscending]

7. My Dad had prostate cancer,

and had two surgeries for it. The Dr.'s wanted him to do the chemo and radiation therapy after the operations, and he refused BOTH!! The cancer never returned, and he lived another 20 years. What got him finally was his heart and lungs, and debilitating spinal stenosis! I guess it's all a matter of "choosing your own poison!" I'm with my Dad on this one!