radiation, no radiation that is the question?

fboobletcancer · July 2012

fboobletcancer · July 2012

My name is Amber and my partner was diagnosed with triple negative invasive ductal carcinoma grade 3 stage IIa in March of 2012. She just turned 40 in May. On July 24th she had an oopharectomy as she was B1+. We are scheduled for her to have a bilateral mestectomy on Aug 8th. She will have spacers put in and we will not know about radiation until pathology report comes in. At this point we do know that her tumor is 5.2cm. However chemo did shrink tumor significantly. We can't even feel it anymore. SO EXCITING!! I am just here to maybe get some more information if anyone else out there has similar breast cancer. What are our options as far as radiation? Should she do radiation even if they say not too? Thanks for your time.

DeborahC · July 2012

You may want to post this in the Triple Negative forum to get a better response. BCO has some guidelines on when radiation may be appropriate after mastectomy:

http://www.breastcancer.org/treatment/radiation/when_appropriate.jsp

fboobletcancer · July 2012

Thank yu Deborah for your response. I did post in the Triple Negative forum, however I wanted to spread into other forums to hopefully get more responses and information for this particular situation. again thank you so much.

mamabee · July 2012

Hi Amber - The link Deborah posted is a great summary of what I was told regarding the need for radiation after a mastectomy. Thanks to better imaging and the ability to more precisely map and direct the radiation than they used to be able to, more doctors are recommending radiation after a mastectomy. My RO showed me studies that found that radiation can cut the rate of local recurrence by 50-70% after a mastectomy. It's great your partner has had such a good response to chemo - did she have any positive lymph nodes before she started chemo? I think now that most doctors recommend radiation for premenopausal women if they even have just one positive node. They may also want to do it because her original tumor was larger than 5 cm and/or because she's triple negative and won't take any antihormonals.

If possible, get an opinion from more than one radiation oncologist. Maybe try to make appointments now so you are sure to get in? I also had chemo, followed by surgery and then radiation, and I was told to start rads 4-6 weeks after surgery. MY RO had already seen me before surgery so as soon as he had the pathology report and my drains were out we set up the radiation simulation and I was able to start my treatment.

Hope the surgery goes well - take care.

fboobletcancer · July 2012

Hi Mamabee, thanks for responding. She had a syntenial lymph node biopsy in the beginning of all this and all was negative. They did say that can change so I guess we will find out on the 8th of Aug if it has stayed that way. I am hoping and praying that it does. I think we will look into getting more than one oppionion. I do know that we have a great team of doctors we are with the Siteman Cancer center and so far they have been absolutely amazing. Was radiation hard for you? Is it worse than chemo?

fboobletcancer · July 2012

Hi Mamabee, thanks for responding. She had a syntenial lymph node biopsy in the beginning of all this and all was negative. They did say that can change so I guess we will find out on the 8th of Aug if it has stayed that way. I am hoping and praying that it does. I think we will look into getting more than one oppionion. I do know that we have a great team of doctors we are with the Siteman Cancer center and so far they have been absolutely amazing. Was radiation hard for you? Is it worse than chemo?

radiation, no radiation that is the question?

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