No rads under any circumstances it seems.

[sarah]

Dear Chelee,
Hopefull;y by now you have some answers and have found a support group near you. Where in Southern Calif. are you? Besides contacting the Susan Komen group at UCLA - they are supported by the Revlon family trust. UCLA has a social worker to help with these things. Cedars Sinai has some groups as does City of Hope, St. John's in Santa Monica, basically I think even your HMO should have something or be able to suggest places also the American Cancer Society and People With Cancer I'm sure have groups all over. There's a group called SHARE that's based in Santa Monica but has groups all over. You really do need a support group or person. This site is wonderful but you also need someone you can call up and who understands what it's like and what's going on.
Good luck with finding a group/person that makes you feel more secure and with your heath. It's great for all of us that this fantastic site exists.
sarah

[Margerie]

I am so sorry Chelee. I understand the complexity of your situation, but the delay in the decision is pretty inexcusable. I had my rads consult about 2 months into chemo and that was with me delaying it a bit- couldn't handle everything at once. They really should of, IMO, had the plan ready before you ended chemo.


If it makes you feel any better, rads only prevents a local recurrence. My surgeon was very surprised that I elected to do rads. I had 5 nodes too. He said he has done thousands of mastectomies and has only seen a local reccurence twice.
I hope things slow down for you! It will take some time to heal your spirit, but you can do it.

Best wishes to you on your journey,

Margerie

[mts]

"At Loma Linda we use protons for patients who have localized cancers in many anatomic sites. We also use protons for some noncancerous disorders. We evaluate other conditions and anatomic sites continually, and are studying ways to combine protons with other forms of treatment..."

Chellee-

I have been reading about proton beam radiation for some time. From what I gather, it is so perfectly beamed onto the cancer area, that rarely is other tissue damaged. They used proton beam for children, for eye cancers (where they go right through the eye and not cause blindness) and of course, prostate cancer.
Anyway, I don't know where you are in XCalif, but the Proton Beam center at Loma Linda is very unique and if I am correct only 1 of about 5 in the nation...?

Anyway, its worth taking a look.
Maria (MTS)

[mts]

http://www.mdanderson.org/care_cente...B74E8222871F34

This website is from MD Anderson in Texas. Everything you want to know about proton beam radiation. I still think it could be used in some breast cancers. In fact I will post a thread to see if anyone here has had it for breast or node radiation.
Maria