I want to stop! talk me down

Notbuyingit. 

Here's the thing.  All of the treatments you have had have risks of permanently damaging your body but breast cancer is a relentless bitch and you need to slap that bitch hard!  Jump up on that table and kick some A$$.

MsP

I just finished and like you, I hated having radiation.  I ate everything green, worked out, got lots of rest in order to take care of my body and then went to rads!!  It simply does not feel right.  But I was so terrified of a recurrence and then having to really deal with some scenarios that would be even worse for my body, so off to rads I went.  Stopping now would be the last chance for rads on that breast but still not receiving the benefit of the initial treatment.  You would receive all of the negatives and none of the benefits.  But it is your body and your decision. 

Lots of things we do are harmful to us and we have no choice.  Simply aging is probably one of the hardest things on our bodies and we cannot control that!

Think of those damn rays as healing rays and visualize those rogue cells being zapped out of their existence like a great video game.  Do whatever it takes to invision this process as healing.  Like getting vitamin D from harmful UV rays.  Most good things have their risks. 

I am now trying to make up to my body by treating it better than I ever have.  I am hoping we will be together for a long time   

Hi Notbuyinit, I understand you very well as I have had the same thoughts more than once and am struggling with the question of how to define the fine line between what needs to be done and what can be dropped because it may do more harm than good. Radiation was a hard thing for me accept - not sure why, maybe because I know too much about Chernobyl and other similar episodes. Until my diagnosis about a year ago, I refused to go through X-Ray machines at the airports and always requested to be patted down instead. I find it ironic now but that is how life is - unpredictable.

You are already at midpoint of your rad treatment, so some damage is already done. Why not take it to the end and have a better shot at getting some benefit from it? My father had rads 15 years ago, he will be 87 soon and doing fine for this age. A friend who had rads some 18 or 20 years ago for breast cancer is doing fine too. By doin fine I mean no side effects from rads.

I think you may try reassessing what is bothering you most now: is it fear of permanent damage or side effects like pain etc and would you feel better if the immediate side effects were taken care of? Maybe taking a break of one or two days would be beneficial. Slow your schedule down if possible. Do not do things that are not urgent.

I took a one day break last week, spent the weekend on recovery only and nothing else, notified my management that I would alternate a day in office with a day of work from home - until I complete treatment. At home, I am naked from the waist up all day and I found this to be the best relief from readiness, pain, etc.

One day at at time.  One foot in front of the other.  You are having rads for a reason.  If you stop now, any nasty escapee cells will not have been treated.  Should you have a local recurrence in future, rads will never again be an option.  Like you, I balked partway through, and my RO's pointing out that my opportunity for future rads had already been X'd out was part of what kept me going.  The other thing that helped was sitting down--for an entire hour--with the head tech.  He pointed out (silly of me to think I was unique) that we all fear we are damaging our bodies, that it is whole body rads (nuclear blasts and plant meltdowns) that is whole-body dangerous, and that statistics show the good far outweighs the bad. 

If you didn't need this treatment, you wouldn't be there.  Do corral one of the RO's (one is always on call) for a nice long chat, and maybe, as I did,  the head of the techs.  You do not need to wait for your scheduled weekly visit.  You need to talk with someone today, tomorrow, or whenever your next treatment is scheduled.  I was basically horrified that I was welcoming nasty radiation into my body, but today, a year out, I am totally grateful that I stuck the course.

Only you can decide what works for you-- and I agree, after surgery and chemo, frankly, I remember thinking "I have done enough already".... but I did do the rads and it was hard to finish in the last weeks. I was already tired from chemo, working every day, and rads just felt like an insult.... I was just pissed off.  And towards the end, when the fatigue set in, I was really just ready to give up on everything. I had trooped through chemo, the wig, feeling like crap, working , bringing up kids..... I was toast.... 

But(and you knew this was coming)  here I am 5.5 years out-- and I NEVER second guess my treatment choices, which tells me that I made the right ones for me..... The research is very clear on rads with lumpectomies.... it is essentially all good-very little bad...... 

If you can hang in there, honestly, you will forget this by next year, but I acknowledge, in the middle of it, it feels like it will simply never end....... but it will.

I think that with RADS it's a sort of all or nothing thing, but you could ask your RO. All I can say is that for me, the last treatments went by pretty quick - don't know why but I was on a countdown & all of the sudden I was almost done. I did try to give myself a little 'treat' every day - I like plants so I'd stop on the way home and get some cut flowers or a houseplant (it was Feb.), or I'd get a really nice bar of soap or some shampoo that smelled good. It helped to have the trip be more than just going for treatment. 

Notbuyingit, we're rooting for you too, as you count down those last treatments.

Notbuyingit, I was totally freaked out about starting radiation. It was such a mental thing for me - so much more difficult mentally than chemo. I just had such a bad feeling about it, and I was reading about all these awful side effects. Then I came across a thread that someone started about having minimal SE from radiation. It helped me to read about the positive outcomes. If it wasn't for that thread, I'm sure I would have backed out. I thought about stopping all through treatment. When my treatment was running late, I thought maybe that was a sign to stop. If there was heavy traffic, I thought maybe that was my sign to stop. I kept looking for any sign to stop.

I just finished my rads today and I've had minimal SE's so far. I'm glad I didn't give in to my instinct to flee. You CAN do this.

I am thankful for this thread as I feel the same way.  I am scheduled to start radiation soon, have not even met with my RO yet, but just don't want to do it. I don't know if it is treatment fatigue, but I am SO TIRED of it all. In addition I will be doing herceptin for another 9 months, and I don't see how I can do rads AND then go sit in that chemo chair to get herceptin on the same day. It just seems like TOO MUCH more to handle. I know that the expert opinion is that I should do it as I had a large tumour and positive nodes, but just don't know if it's worth it. I am worried about SE's if I get radiation to the collarbone area (which I probably will have to). Did anyone have SE's like swallowing/taste/thyroid problems after doing that ?  Notbuyingit...what kind of pain/discomfort did you have, and how have you been doing since your last post?

Notbuyingit......thank you so much, you don't know how much encouragement you have given me to get this done. I was really afraid of the se's. You have really helped me to face this next challenge.

I felt a lot like you, Debiann.  I was so torn between mastectomy (single?  double?) and lumpectomy, that I decided to have a lumpectomy, just to get that blasted tumor gone while I took a little time to make my decision.  I didn't tell them, but I was considering it a surgical biopsy, with decision to follow.  As it turned out, my margins were clear, my prognosis great, my aesthetic outcome surprisingly fine, and I was kind of surprised to find I was very, very happy to have avoided the potentially serious risks of pain and infection, not only from the surgery itself, but from the DIEP I was considering, and was really surprised to find I was happy to still have my breast.  I  considered skipping the rads, as "they" thought perhaps I could do that, but when I met with the RO, I realized that I really wanted to clobber any leftover cells before they decided to take a little trip to somewhere else in my body.  I loathed everything about rads, and had a really difficult time with voluntarily putting myself in the path of radiation, but I am very glad I did it.  I've spent the last  year or so scouring these boards, have read about any and all issues our members had with mastectomy and reconstrution, and, you know, although, had I chosen mastectomy, I was absolutely adamant about immediate reconstruction, this much later, I'm not sure I'd opt for reconstrution at all.

MotherofOne, although I don't think I've come across it on any of these threads, I'll bet there are oodles of us who publicly chose a lumpectomy while secretly anticipating a possible mastectomy.  I'm so grateful that insurance has to cover a subsequent mastectomy.  Keeping that paid-for option open was what allowed me to have the lesser surgery.