At 38, Renee Grandbois is fighting an aggressive form of breast cancer, and the battle is intense. She’s gone through 16 rounds of chemo, had a complete mastectomy then had 24 rounds of radiation treatment.
And after all that, Grandbois found out the cancer had metastasized in her brain, a devastating blow to the young mother of two and her fiancé.
But a new treatment offered at the Cedars Cancer Centre is a “ray of light,” she says. Dubbed the cyberknife M6, it's a $4 million piece of equipment and the only one of the latest model in Canada.
‘It's fun to know you're going to be treated and you're not going to hurt more than what you did before,” she said.
The cyberknife doesn't cut: it delivers very focused radiation at much higher doses. It also tracks tumours as they move up and down when the patients breathe so it can stay on target
“It allows us to spare normal tissues so for high doses in targeted areas it’s a wonderful tool,” said MUHC radiation oncologist Valerie Panet-Raymond.
The staff is also excited about the new machine, used to treat inoperable cancers in the brain, spine, and lungs with fewer side effects.
In Grandbois's case, it took one session.
“I would say the side effects are what really got me down this year. We treat the cancer, but there's so many side effects on bones, muscles, your head they call it chemo brain. This [treatment has] no side effects or barely any,” she said.
The success rate for tumours the size of Grandbois’s is 90 per cent, giving her hope she might one day leave cancer behind.
