Yes, Virginia, There Will be Radiation

The meeting with our radiation oncologist yesterday afternoon, for follow up to the PET/CT scan, went as expected: "there is no evidence of any recurrence of the cancer." Lois goes in this morning for measurements for a body mold which will hold her body in the exact same position for each session of radiation. There will be 28 sessions, Mondays through Fridays, 10 minutes each, and they are scheduled to begin next Thursday.

The odd thing is that Lois says she never thought she would be "excited about getting radiation." I think I know what she means. If you're confused here's a synopsis: A surgeon in Spokane, who was scheduled to removed her other breast, questioned why she hadn't had radiation, so we returned to our two oncologists in Kennewick for review consultations. The removal of four or more cancerous nodes mean required radiation, three or less, not so. She had three. The surgeon in Spokane said she would have strongly recommended radiation anyway, and our radiation oncologist here in Kennewick had said the same thing; but our chemotherapy onocologist had "swayed" us away (the evidence for survivability with women with three or less, who had radiation, was statistically no different than those who didn't). After the review consultation a few days ago with the rad oncologist, we walked out bummed thinking we had made a bad decision a year ago when the original decision was made, especially since the radiation oncologist said this time it was too late to do radiation, but it was also probably "ok" since she was in the recommended, rather than the mandatory category (even though only one node away from mandatory). whew!

The next day we got a call from the rad oncologist saying she had consulted with a colleague at UCLA and she was now recommending Lois get a PET/CT and "if it shows no cancer we can still do radiation;" so here we are.

I questioned her about why she said "if it shows no cancer," then the she would do radiation, I thought radiation was to reduce tumors. "That is correct," she said, "the reason we would do it now (with Lois) is to kill any microscopic cells that remain in the region of the breast that was affected; and they are there." I didn't like that last comment, but sometimes reality smacks you up side the head. "And the radiation will kill them before they start growing again, and spreading." Zap away doc.

Before meeting with her I was thinking there's no good way out of this. She's either going to tell us that the cancer has spread and we have to start all over with the chemo, or she's going to tell us Lois will have radiation. Not much of a good news/bad news scenario; but taking everything into account, we both agree, it was good news and we're both excited about radiation.

Here's a picture of Brooke and Maia (is that a binkie?) taken at Twin Lakes a few weeks ago on a nice cool day with natural air conditioning. It was 107 degrees here in Kennewick yesterday; today we're having a cool spell, only going to be in the upper nineties.