HELP! anyone please

BEV,  I just saw your post and sorry someone didn't get to you earlier!  Gosh, it's been nearly two months since you posted.  I wonder if you have gotten answers to your questions and assume you've begun rads.  But I can try to offer my best thoughts on the questions you had.  I think the delay in rads makes sense, some people heal up at diff rates, so rather than start your sunburn on a tender place, best to wait until incisions look rather better.

As to this chemo comment from your oncologist, saying that it was not as successful as they would have liked to see, only thing I can figure is when they operated on you, could be your 5cm growth had not gone down as much as it sometimes can on chemo.  I had ACT chemo, perhaps you had a diff kind, and I also had a 5cm IDC growth and two smaller ones.  After my first chemo infusion, the pain I had in my breast went away.  By the time they got to surgery, my IDC growths had gone waaaay down.  Now, what this might mean to your oncologist is they may want to also go ahead and throw in a diff chemo treatment for the kind of cancer you got.  That way, they know you're covered, to be dang sure to prevent spread and recurrence, you know.  So, COULD BE you will have more chemo treatments either before or after rads, altho there are other variables that lead to this decision.  This was a possibility mentioned to me about chemo, that there might be more to come after original chemo and surgery, with rads a for-sure deal.  Well, since my chemo did a rather good job, they chose not to do some other sort of chemo or additional chemo or new mix of chemo. 

Your chemo was NOT a waste of time, pretty much any chemo will reduce or stop cancer.  It's kind of like some cleaners do better on some dirt than others, depending on the stain.  Your diganosis cannot change on account of the LOCATION of your cancer was in the ducts, thus invasive ductal cancer IDC.  So, I think your cancer doc mentioned it on account of they may want to perhaps fine-tune your chemo, to something that will be closer to completely effective, by using maybe a diff group of drugs or diff combination of drugs or a new drug for a shorter length of time than before.  So, they may wind up putting you thru a couple months more of a new chemo combo type thing.  That's my understanding of why she mentioned it to you.  Feel free to check back with any other concerns.  GG