Made the Right Call on Radiation

Almost five years after I had to make my decision about having radiation or not there is finally some research that would have offered guidance.

Turns out I made the right decision to have radiation, since I have four of the five risk factors they say would benefit from radiation after a mastectomy. And especially since I have the two risk factors that seem to matter most--extracapsular extension (the cancer not only invaded lymph nodes, it also burst out of them into surrounding tissue) and grade 3 aggressiveness (the highest there is).

Making this decision was one of the most difficult of my treatment. As this article states, there has been controversy on this issue. After all, radiation carries risks as well as benefits.

I believe I solicited 5 different opinions--from oncologists and radiologists alike. One glibly told me I was lucky, because with 3 positive nodes I wouldn't need radiation. This has been US standard of care.

Luckily, I also found some doctors who pointed me to studies from other countries that showed there was benefit in adding radiation after mastectomy, especially for younger women with aggressive disease like me.

I've written about this before, but one paragraph in those articles convinced me that I needed to do radiation, even though signing up for 35 nuclear blasts was the last thing I wanted to do.

I will always remember the numbers in that paragraph--women alive 5 and 10 years after bc treatment--were shockingly low. Even with radiation.

But this study points to some good outcomes, of which I am actually one.

I sincerely hope this research gets out there and informs the way drs treat young women with this disease, because it is different for us in so many ways.