I had an appointment with my radiation oncologist today. He explained how the treatment works in full detail, including side effects during the treatment, along with short-term and long-term effects.
Fatigue and burns to the skin are pretty much guaranteed during the treatment, and so is some damage to the lung on the affected side. The lung damage due to scar tissue is supposed to be minimal to the point where I shouldn’t notice it at all.
After the treatment, scar tissue in the treated area is also a concern. Lastly, in 30 – 40 years, I could get cancer from the radiation, such as leukemia, or even another breast cancer occurrence. It doesn’t sound wonderful, but it reduces the chance of this breast cancer coming back from 25% to 5%. So yeah, I’ll take that.
We talked about the game plan of doing chemotherapy first, followed by radiation, and further surgery to remove the first two levels of lymph nodes. I know my surgeon wanted to do the lymph node surgery first, but I thought it made more sense to do the chemo and radiation first, so that the lymph nodes have the best possible chance at being free of cancer when they are removed. That way, I can breathe easy, despite the lung damage from radiation!