5 day Radiation Treatment vs. traditional radiation?

michlady

5 day Radiation Treatment vs. traditional radiation?

michlady

Has anyone had experience with Mammosite - a twice a day (for five days) radiation option?  I'm trying to reach people that have made that choice and what their thoughts were ...

fmakj

I signed up for the clinical trial on this:  Partial Breast Radiation VS Whole Breast Radiation.  I was randomly selected for the Whole Breast.  Since not being offered chemo (and I am TN) however, I am glad that I received the Whole Breast..... just in case there was more affected than what the lumpectomy took out.  I am now going to have the MRI.  Hopefully someone who actually chose this option will be able to help you! 

michlady

TN?  What does that mean?    My lumpectomy is not until next Friday.  I'm just hoping that the lymph nodes are not involved and researching options for radiation.   Whole Breast Radiation - what exactly was that?    I'm new to all of this, as you can probably tell     

ICanDoThis

TN is triple negative - you're not, you're ER/PR+, which means that at the end of treatment, you will be likely put on a hormonal treatment. Don't worry about that now - you'll have plenty of time to freak out about all of this soon.

Mammosite is a form of partial breast irradiation that involves putting a device (called a catheter) into the tumor bed, then getting 10 treatments of radiotive pellets inserted into the catheter (once in the morning, once in the afternoon 2wc daily) for 5 days. I chose this option, and I do believe that putting radiation directly where the tumor was is a really good idea. It protects your heart and lungs from any radiation.

If your team is experienced, this is a good option. Mine wasn't - I was the first patient to get it at that center. The good side was that I got everybody's full attention - everybody and his brother wanted to watch the damned thing put in. The bad side - they didn't put me on an antibiotic. It sounds like your team is experienced, and is thinking about putting the catheter in during the lumpectomy? In that case, you will have your radiation right after surgery, and this would be really good.

One downside my oncologist points out every time I go in for a checkup and follow-up mammograms is that the interior of the breast does contain more scar tissue, so I have had an MRI instead of a follow-up mammogram. It's harder to see what's going on.

But I hope someone has told you that Grade 1s have excellent prognoses - our cancer is lazy and slow to spread.

Please feel free to keep asking questions, or to use the chat feature.

fmakj

I will bump a thread called "Abbreviations for Newbies" for you under the Waiting for Results thread that will help with some of the abbreviations.  I believe that "ICanDoThis" would be a great person to ask!  Whole breast radiation is where you receive external radiation on the breast and area around the breast and into the underarm area.  Your skin does get red and can get irritated.  Within 2 weeks of completing radiation, most skin issues are resolved. Wishing you the best!