Why now?

I think it is best if as aggressive as possible treatment is pursued in the beginning to avoid reoccurance... to put it simply.

radiation is not so bad.  good luck with your decision.  It seems as if they trickle the information they give you bit by bit so you don't freak.

Hi

My oncologist said that doing radiation is a precaution....he compared the additional treatment like weeding your yard....when you weed your yard, if one weed is missed, then more come back...with radiation treatment, they are trying to kill all the cancer cells in that area.

I hope this helps!

Take care!

Sharon

I had radiation after mastectomy as well.  And it came as a surprise, too, since all the docs I had seen before said no radiaiton needed.  The rad onc is the one who decided I did need the radiation.  She said I was somewhat in the gray area for it (small, but clear margins--3mm) no lymph involvement, but what pushed her to recommend the radiation for sure was a combo of my age (38), the grade of the cancer (3) and the DCIS found did not clear the margins.  So off to radiation I went.  It really wasn't nearly as bad or hard as I had anticipated.  Going every day sucked, but it actually went by pretty quickly since it just became a part of my daily ritual.  My rad onc said that local recurrences OFTEN eventually end up in metastatic cancer, so she wanted to be as aggressive as possible.  I didn't question it too much after that.

Edited to add:  I forgot to mention that when I saw the rad onc, she told me that she sure was glad that even though my onc and other docs didn't think I needed the radiation, that they allowed me to have the referral--otherwise she said I would have been one of the ones "lost in the cracks!"  At least now, if the cancer comes back locally, I can't say, "Oh I wish I would've done radiation!"