SPECIAL TWEETCAST: Cyberknife Procedure

Spend one hour with Delaine Anderson, and it’s clear she does not shrink from life’s challenges. She has spent the last 25 years in the same Bluff City home but lived in different parts of the country before that. She even lived seven years in Greece, where she didn’t speak the language. She raised five children. The past few years, Anderson and friends have sent affordable wheelchairs to developing nations for people who can’t otherwise afford them.

Anderson knows how to help others – as well as take care of herself. Lung cancer, though, was a challenge that brought her to her knees. And surgery wasn’t an option to remove the cancerous spot because doctors were afraid her heart wasn’t up to major surgery.

“Oh boy, I was in bad shape,” Anderson said. “I couldn’t talk to anyone. I just wanted to sit in my chair and cry.”

Then she heard a word that gave her new hope: CyberKnife. She learned this innovative technology that uses robotics to deliver precision radiation treatment was available at Bristol Regional Medical Center, the only hospital in the region to offer the CyberKnife Stereotactic Radiosurgery System.

Anderson will receive four CyberKnife treatments this week, and Twitter users throughout the region and from around the country can follow her final treatment in real time via Twitter. Wellmont Health System and its communications partner during this “Twittercast,” WJHL 11 Connects, will send out minute-by-minute “tweets” as the CyberKnife team at Bristol Regional treats Anderson’s cancer with powerful, incredibly accurate bursts of radiation.

The Twittercast will begin Friday at 10 a.m. as Anderson receives her final treatment. Twitter is a Web site and service that lets users send short text messages up to 140 characters in length to a group of people.

Mobile phone and computer users will be able to track the procedure by following either Wellmont Health System or news anchor Sara Diamond, who will “tweet” for 11 Connects, on Twitter. You can follow the procedure below.

11 Connects and Wellmont will be the first in the United States to “tweet” a CyberKnife procedure in real time.

Hear from Delaine herself as she spoke with Sara Diamond earlier in the week.