It isn't an opinion but fact. Mass radiation treatment irradiates the entire brain killing both good and cancerous cells. Ashya would have lost brain function and might even have died from such therapy. Proton Therapy on the other hand combined with minimal mass radiation treatment targets the damaged cells and avoids damaging the healthy ones. Which part of this don't you understand Dave?
My little boy had targetted radiation John. He had a head protecting helmet made specially for him. This covered his whole brain to keep unwanted radiation away except for the tumour. That was narrow beam targetted directly by a directional access point thru the helmet. The same with his spine, an access point throught the top of his helmet was targetted at the tunour on the top of his spine, but also the radiation was designed to pass straight down the spine to irradiate the whole spine.
We were lucky that we had the top expert in the Midlands, some said in the country. Important people used to fly in from abroad to be treated by him ... but the bottom line was that there was only a 25% success rate ... and I wonder if they stretched that to give us hope.
Of course all this was almost 40 years ago... and things will have progressed hopefully. Unhappily my understanding is that things have only improved in a very limited way with brain tumours.
I wonder, if this proton therapy is targetted like the radiation treatment my son received, cos if it is, maybe Atsha will suffer the same rather random Hit and Miss that happened with my little boys treatment. Despite every effort being made to hit the right spot, I wonder if it only partailly achieved its target.
Surely with modern techniques they can make sure the treatment is precisely targetted and achieving its aim? without that, I fear the success rate will be little higher than 40 years ago @25%.
However, my understanding is that if the proton treatment is successful in killing the tumour, then Ayshas quality of life will be better than my boys life might have been. We knew that amongst other things, had he survived, he would have been sterile. No joke that.
Proton Therapy apparantly does not kill the good tissue, but just the tumour. The old treatment killed everything in its narrow beam of radiation, good and bad.
The world is watching. I feel sure that Aysha will get the best treatment possible and hope that he and the Medics together can beat the odds. If they can, after recovery, it seems that he will be able to return to a healthy and full life
They are all going thru hell atm. My love goes out to the whole family.
May Aysha be one of the lucky ones.
I would like to point out that I am not an expert in any way, but have been thru it and have an understanding becos of that. I am not sure that I would have done what the family did, becos of the risks and delay to the treatment, but they have been lucky [after the appalling treatment of the parents in Spain; that makes me so angry] in that things seem to have fallen in place.
To be brutally honest, the idea of selling the apartment to raise the money was very loving, but rather ill conceived, because it would have been too late. Medulla Blastomas are viscious rapid growing tumours. Thank goodness they are getting on with the treatment agian.
