Healthy Living Today: Radiosurgery | Video

| 12/13/2012

Janice Fadel teaches 4th graders.

"They are willing to learn at this age," Fadel says. "They are really willing to learn."

She`s taught for 40 years and even as she fights cancer, she doesn`t miss school.

"Everybody tells me to stop teaching, but I think that is what is keeping me going," Fadel says.

Janice celebrated being cancer free 5 years after she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

"I just though I was over this, but you are never over this," Fadel says. "You are always getting it check and it just keeps coming back but I keep fighting it."

The cancer metastasized. First to her neck, treated with chemo, and more recently ten spots in her brain.

Her radiation oncologist Dr. Christopher Leagre aimed to do what is too tricky for surgery and what whole brain radiation failed to accomplish: Use new Novalis TX radiosurgery to target each spot with a high concentrated dose of radiation.

"The highlighted blue rep. One arc of radiation that the machine will put to each spot... each of these arcs is directed to a specific site," Leagre says.

A new customized mask replaces the cumbersome screwed in head frame to hold patients in place.

This case is her doctor`s most complex and aggressive yet.

"We were able to control disease that might have affected her ability to continue teaching and hopefully that is what we were able to preserve for her," Leagre says.

"It`s definitely giving me more time," Fadel says. "I just have keep trying to fight this."

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