Radiation Onology Dilemma

[Eccsierra@aol.com]

Clinical Medical Physics Problem....  What would you do?  Patient and husband
in their 80's.  Patient has recurrent breast cancer.  Needs electron beam
(8MeV) treatment to axilla.  Patient has advanced Alzheimers.  She can not
function out of site of husband.  For the patient to be compliant for
treatment the husband needs to hold her hand(s).  The actual geometrical set
up is yet to be determined.  In the State of Nevada, having another person in
the room with a patient during treatment is against regulations. We may, if
the "degree" of safety can be determined, be able to get an exceptgion.  We
are considering sedation but this gets to be a problem when multiple
treatments are involved (this is not ruled out at this point).  Any ideas
would be greatly appreciated.