Pete - report on visit with Joyce, Anna and Ella to Edinburgh on Wednesday 5th November

This week, I went to Edinburgh along with Joyce, Anna and Ella. The girls took the opportunity to go to St Andrews Uni, where Ella feels she'd like to go in 2016 after school. I stayed in Edinburgh and sorted out a few things with Z, as well as going along to the radiotherapy with him. I took some photos and Z said he was happy for me to post them, so here goes:

It all takes place in the Western General Hospital - it's about a ten minute drive from Lennox St, so Z can drive (but may have to queue for car parking) or take a taxi (costs less than £5 each way) or take a bus (free, but has to walk 100 -200 yards at each end).

Radiotherapy is basically radiation - so like super-strong xrays. Z gets taken into a room and has to lie there on his own while he gets zapped. He doesn't feel anything at the time at all - just like xrays.

He has to take his shirt off, and he's already been tattooed with lines on his torso, so they know how to line him up. Two specialist nurses help him (a radiotherapist has to do a four year university course to qualify to do this - similar to physiotherapy etc - like a nurse, but different).

He had to lie ultra still for about 10 - 15 minutes while the machine whirrs and buzzes and the arm moves around him, zapping him from different angles.

He then gets up and goes home..... very simple really. He is doing this five days a week, Monday to Friday, for four weeks in a row. So the last dose will be given on Friday 28th November. This is known as "curative radiotherapy" - the treatment kills living cells, but while normal tissue cells can rejuvenate, cancer cells cannot: once they are killed, that's it. So the hope is that all of the cancer cells are destroyed during the four weeks.

They cannot check this as they go along, but they say that about 6 weeks after it's finished, they may do another MRI scan to see how much the tumour has shrunken.

Radiotherapy cannot be repeated later - it's a one-off treatment - once, only, ever. If it was done again, the risk of nerve damage to the spine, causing paralysis. So it's never repeated.

This is the only shot at curing the cancer that Z will have. After this, treatment will be only palliative i.e. to lessen the symptoms of the cancer. As an example, if he has difficulties swallowing, they may put a "stent" down his oesophagus (this is a plastic tube that's wedged in to hold the oesophagus open at the point where the cancer is narrowing it).

There will be side effects from the radiotherapy but there is a 10 - 15 day delay in these, so Z is feeling fine, but a bit tired just now. Over the next month, he will probably start to feel tired, a bit nauseous and maybe with a sore throat. These symptoms will go away around 10 - 15 days after the radiotherapy is finished.

That's it! Very expensive machines, very elaborate, computerised therapy, but for the patient, it's really quite simple and rapid.