The Olson Family

I have decided upon recommendation of my radiologist to have radiation therapy. This cannot be done until my reconstruction is done because I cannot have surgery until 1 year after radiation is complete. So the plan is to finish with my implant surgery and then have radiation for 6 weeks. If I need chemo (I find out in May) then the plan will be surgery, chemo for a few months??, and then radiation. This could be drug out for a long time but I feel like I need to do everything possible from keeping this cancer from coming back.

Here are the reasons why radiation is beneficial to me. 1-I am young and so they always are more aggressive with the treatment. 2-When they did the mastectomy, they took out all the breast tissue up to the chest wall. The tissue went to the lab and the margin of healthy tissue was very small. This means that the cancer was close to my chest wall and although they think they got all of the cancer it is too close for comfort. 3-Chemo is not as effective at the surgery site because of the healing and poorer blood supply to the area. So even if I need chemo, radiation is better for the chest wall and for preventing it from coming back underneath my implants or in the chest wall.

Of course there are side effects to the radiation but they are not that bad and very localized. I will have to go for 6 weeks Monday-Friday BUT I will only be there for about 15 min. max each day. Not so bad huh. Sounds much better than having CANCER again.

I know that one of the things that I am supposed to learn throughout all of this is to be patient. I still have no idea what is going to be happening to me through the next few months. When I went to see my oncologist last week she looked over everything and decided to do one more onco test before we decide if I will do chemom or not. She said we caught it early and everything looks good but not good enough to completely rule out chemo. My cancer was 0.8 cm which is relatively small. If it was .05cm then I would not need chemo. If it was 1cm then I would need chemo so you can see how it is hard to decide what to do. The next test will take a few weeks to see how aggressive my cancer grows. If the results come back low then I’m okay but intermediate or high means chemo.

I was not expecting my doctor to talk about radiation because my first surgeon told me that there is almost no need for radiation if I get the total mastectomy and my lymph nodes come back clean. So I am meeting with the radiologist this Friday to talk about whether or not he thinks radiation would benefit me. I guess it’s not that big of a deal it will just be an inconvenience. The actual radiation procedure will only take about 5 minutes but I will have to go Mon-Fri for 5 weeks to do it. So that will be annoying.

I am still continuing with the reconstructive process and hope to be able to have my next surgery for that sometime in June. I see that Doctor tomorrow so I’ll ask him what he thinks the timeline will be for that.

We are all going down to Las Vegas next week to do the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure and I’m excited to be able to go and do that. Plus it will be nice to see all the family again. They have all been so supportive and loving through all of this. AND I can’t wait to meet and hold my newest little nephew Mason!