time between surgery simulation and radiation

My BS and RO said it's a twelve week window between surgery and starting radiation. I had lumpectomy on 7/11/2018, re-excision on 8/8/2018, an unrelated larger abdominal surgery on 9/18/2018, set-up for rads on 10/16/2018, radiation final set-up 10/23/2018, and first of 33 sessions on 10/29/2018. They were really pushing me to start a week or so earlier, but I knew my body couldn't handle the amount of stretching I'd have to do. As it was, I felt pretty horrible the first few weeks and then reached a healing point where the stretching no longer hurt. They counted elapsed time from the re-excision, not the lumpectomy.

I had my surgery first and then had chemo. It was about 5 months after my surgery that I had radiation.

You're likely right Alice. So it was 4-6 weeks after last active treatment before rads. I lost 60 lbs that I didn't need to lose with chemo and my WBC tanked. They wouldn't let me start rads until I'd stabilized.

There are a lot of women here that get started in a 4-8 week window. I don't know that there is actually an established time window, but I have found, as mentioned above the 10 to 12 week window. One also cannot find anything on the what if radiation is started beyond 12 weeks?

With worry about metastasis maybe the bigger question is how long from diagnosis? A lot of cancers have been in our bodies for a very long time so obviously it's concerning to get treated as quickly as possible. Since I consider cancer an epidemic the hospitals and treatment centers are overloaded. Maybe not all, but mine was. I was 10 weeks getting going with rads. My first simulation doing the breath hold failed so back in I went and I was granted my wish to go prone. This was in between waiting for an appt., waiting for the plan to go through, and once I finally received a schedule it was hardly worth the paper it was written on. There were many, many days I was waiting for hours, as were a lot of other folks. Felt so bad for all the other patients. We all took it in stride as the staff worked very hard under pressure conditions and we all ended up getting our treatment completed. Radiation for me was a little stressful, I was glad to get it done.

Good luck to everyone.

I was at a hospital. There’s 1 machine. First question I asked the RO was how many patients he was currently treating. He said 40 or 42 patients. Simple math told me a 15 min slot x 40 is a 10 hr day. My 2nd simulation and 1st treatment was at 8:45PM!! I was walking behind my RO on the way out that night and I heard him say to someone he had puttingin 12-14 hr days. Need more machines.