We met with the oncologist a few days after going home from the surgery to discuss what was going to happen next. We were told that Luke was going to need 6 days of radiation. There was some question as to whether Luke was going to need to have his testicle radiated too. We weren't thrilled with this news because we were informed that if his testicle did get radiated that he might be sterile and that he might need hormones to help him enter puberty. The surgery report mentioned that Luke's right testicle was stuck to the kidney and the oncologist was going to have to have a meeting with the surgeon to find out exactly what that meant.

In the meantime, we were sent to the Cancer Agency in Vancouver to meet with the radiologist and get Luke fitted for his cast that would hold him during the radiation treatment. I had no idea how it all worked and before we got there I had visions of them trying to make a plaster cast of Luke's body and I couldn't figure out how they were going to get him to stay still that long. That's not the way they did things. We were told to strip Luke down to his diaper and then we were taken into a room to get him fitted. There was a large examining table in the middle of the room and one of the technicians grabbed what looked like a big blue pillow. I touched it and it felt like a bean bag. The tech told me that the bag was filled with little Styrofoam pellets. They put the bag on the table and then they put Luke on top of the bag. They very gently squished him down into the pillow thing and fluffed it up all around him. There was a nozzle at one end of the pillow and they hooked a tube up to it. We held him still on the bag while they turned on the machine that the tube was attached to. It acted just like a vacuum and it sucked all the air out of the bag in seconds and the result was a perfect hard plastic form around Luke. It only took a few minutes to make the cast.

We were then taken into a 'set up' room which had a mock LINAC machine. Luke was strapped into the cast [his arms and legs were tied down] and they used laser guides to measure and mark where everything should line up for when the machine was turned on. Luke hated being tied down, I didn't blame him. The technicians used permanent markers to draw lines all over Luke's chest and belly. The took some x-rays to make sure everything was lined up correctly and then we were allowed to go home with the instructions of trying to make sure the lines were visible on his body.

Almost a week passes before we have to go back and begin the radiation. Turns out that Luke didn't need to have his testicle radiated. We spend a lot of time in the waiting room waiting for our turn at the LINAC (Linear Accelerator) machine. I remember looking around the waiting room and feeling guilty because I was grateful that there were no other kids or young people there, only adults.

The LINAC machine looked very cool. It took up most of the room and had a huge swing arm so that the whole thing could turn over upside down. There were laser guides on the wall and when Luke was first strapped down I felt like a character in Logan's Run. We had to tie him down and leave the room while they radiated his abdomen, but the treatment itself only took a minute and a half. Most of the time was spent setting up. I was thankful that each treatment went so quickly.

Luke had six days of radiation treatments.