Appointment with Radiation Oncologist

I had my consultation with the radiation oncologist on Friday. First of all, she is extremely nice. We bonded over having kids roughly the same age and our shared disdain for being expected to do MEAP prep with our kids. Not to mention she seemed extremely competent, too. Plus, she had a nice, good-looking intern working with her and it's always a bonus to go to a doctor's appointment and get some nice eye candy. Heh.

I asked her about the latest studies that indicate that 3 weeks of a slightly higher dosage of radiation are just as effective as the standard 6 week course of treatment that they are recommending. Her position is that there is more than 30 years of research to back up the effectiveness of the 6-week treatments, whereas there are only 10 years behind the 3-week treatments. She is recommending we stick with the 6-week course of treatment - why take our chances on regretting something, say, 15 years from now. I'm all on board with that - go with the thing that you know works!

We also discussed the rumor I had heard from a friend who went through this 8 years ago that I would not be able to have reconstruction surgery (if needed) following the radiation. She said that simply was not true. So that was also good to know (and I called my friend to tell her that, too!)

So the next step is to go in for my first "set up" appointment on October 20th. They'll get me "aligned" and tattooed (yes, I said tattooed with little "alignment marks" - barely imperceptible dots, I am told.) I'll also have a CAT scan (standard operating procedure) and will be able to schedule all of my treatment dates on that first day. We'll be cutting it close, but from my calculations I should be able to get everything in by the end of the year, no problem. My plan is to try to schedule the appointments for 8:30 each morning. That way, I'll be able to get the kids on the bus at around 7:50 and then walk to the hospital for my treatment. I did a "test walk" this week-end and it takes about 25-30 minutes to get there. So I'll be able to get all my treatments AND get my exercise in for the day as well. If only I could take the dogs with me and leave them outside the hospital someplace - then I would REALLY be multi-tasking. Obviously that isn't going to happen though. Oh well. Can't have everything, I suppose!