When to Arrive and What to Expect
Upon Arrival
On the day of your appointment, please plan to arrive 15 minutes early in order to familiarize yourself with the department and to allow adequate time to change into a gown. You will then wait in one of our gender-specific waiting areas until the radiation therapist arrives to escort you to the simulation suite.
This is What to Expect
One of the purposes of the simulation appointment is to position you on the table in a precise manner that can be reproduced each day. In order to accomplish this, it may be necessary to create some form of custom immobilization that will help you to be positioned accurately on the treatment table each day. If your physician requests a special device it will be constructed prior to the start of your simulation. Because you will be asked to lie still, this process can cause discomfort. If you feel it to be necessary and your doctor approves, you can take medication for pain. Movement during the creation of the custom immobilization and/or during actual scanning can compromise the setup and reproducibility of the treatment.
The next step will be to localize the area that needs to be treated. If this is done on the CT simulator, you may be given intravenous contrast to highlight the areas of interest. This will have been explained to you at the time of consultation, along with any specific dietary instructions that you may need to follow prior to simulation. The actual CT scan will only take about fifteen minutes. The therapist may put marks on your skin with a felt tip marker and you will be asked not to wash these marks off. It is also quite possible that you will be given some permanent, very small marks to ensure that the therapists are able to treat you accurately each day.
On the completion of your treatment plan, our front desk will call to schedule your treatment appointments. Your appointment time will typically be the same time throughout your course of treatment (examples: Daily at 2:15 p.m. or daily at 10:45 a.m.). Routine treatment times are scheduled daily, Monday through Friday, between 7:00 am and 5:00 pm, except for holidays.