[Margerie]

First of all Tricia- what a fabulous husband you have!

But I am not liking your surgeon. First of all, we all are battling cancer outside of the breast. If it stayed in the breast- we wouldn't need chemo! Breast cancer in the breast is not fatal. Well, anyway he could use some empathy training. And "bound to happen" arghh.

I had the works as far as radiation goes. I had 5 nodes and my rad onc said with that many nodes + in the axilla, there is a 30% probability there was cancer in my supraclavicular nodes. I had rads to my chest wall, axilla and collar bone. I did not have a lot of fatigue, which was a miracle since I did it along with my taxol and herceptin treatments. I did get very burned the last 7 treatments or so. Luckily- most of the burned stuff was on skin I couldn't feel anyway (surgery). It took a couple of months for the skin to heal. Now I just have an interesting tan line. And the radiated skin needs to be majorly protected from sun exposure. Sometimes I forget to put sunscreen on the collarbone area and it gets pretty red.

I was pretty po'ed when I found out I needed radiation after mastectomy. I got over it.

I hope it all goes smoothly for you. And I wouldn't hesitate to get a second opinion from a rads onc. You definitely want to have one that is a good fit for you- since you go to their office a lot.