Over the weekend the frequency with which Karen had to go to the bathroom continued to increase, and by Tuesday she was going roughly once an hour. The radiation oncologist said radiation can cause this, but it shouldn't be happening at this dosage. He also said 30 units (Gy) of radiation was planned over the 15 treatments, and we are only at 22, whereas intestinal distress is pretty much unheard of with less than 45. He thinks this may be the body warning us the radiation is affecting the intestines in an unexpected way. His biggest concern seems to be that of long term side effects.
So he put the radiation treatments on hold. Mayo is closed for Thanksgiving anyway, so we weren't going to get radiation Thursday, but we will be skipping Wednesday and Friday. This leaves us at 11 of 15 treatments. If everything calms down then we'll finish the remaining 4 treatments starting on Monday next week. If not, then the doctor feels it's likely we've done enough treatments to mitigate at least some of the pain. We talked about other options, such as treating just the most painful spot, but since we don't know which area is causing the problem we can't be sure we wouldn't end up doing more harm than good. Ideally things will just settle down so we can finish.
