CARING FOR patients
Jan Roberts, left, with radiation oncologist Jeffrey Bogart, MD. Roberts wears a cap that honors those, like him, who served in Vietnam, especially those who didn’t come back. PHOTO BY RICHARD WHELSKY
he chose radiation treatment to treat his prostate cancer BY JIM HOWE
JAN ROBERTS WASN’T SURE WHAT TO EXPECT when he received radiation treatments for prostate cancer at the Upstate Cancer Center.
disorder. He is retired from his family business of selling highway equipment, such as sanders and snowplows.
A disabled Vietnam veteran, he receives primary care at the Syracuse VA Medical Center, where he was diagnosed aer an elevated test result for his PSA, or prostate-specific antigen. It would have been a lengthy drive from his home in Cazenovia to Albany, the nearest VA offering treatment. e Veterans Choice Program, however, allowed him to receive treatment at Upstate.
His treatments were given on the state-of-the-art Vero radiation system. Instead of traditional radiation treatments, which can take up to 45 daily sessions over nine weeks, the precision and accuracy of the imageguided radiation technology allowed treatment to be completed over 28 sessions in fewer than six weeks. He finished his treatments at the beginning of November 2018.
Offered the choice of surgical removal of the prostate or radiation treatment, Roberts chose a non-invasive approach with focused radiotherapy. He became a patient of Jeffrey Bogart, MD, the head of radiation oncology.
“I usually had the same staff every day. ey made me feel wonderful, as though I was the only person in the hospital. ey were all very kind, very good, and what could have been an unpleasant experience was pleasant,” Roberts says.
“I went for radiation, and I was a little apprehensive, but once I got into the hospital, what I thought was going to be an unpleasant scenario turned out to be a very good scenario, all things considered,” says Roberts, 73, who also deals with the effects of wartime wounds, exposure to the herbicide Agent Orange and post-traumatic stress
His routine involved stripping from the waist down, lying on a table with a custom body mold, his hands on two grips over his head. e machine, guided by daily integrated imaging of the precise location of the prostate, would revolve around him as it focused radiation on the cancer cells. continued on page 5
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CANCER CARE
upstate.edu/cancer l winter 2019
