Thursday, January 3, 2013

Radiation - 100%

I have finished 28 rounds of radiation.  I had my last treatment 12/28 and was able to ring in the new year with 100% of my treatments behind me.  Aside from the inconvenience of daily radiation, I did great and my skin even held up well.  Dr. A was a little disappointed I did not have more of a skin reaction to the radiation.  But, she didn't suggest more treatments, which was great news.  Aside from a slight irritation and what looks and feels like a sunburn, I have not had any major issues.  I expected to experience fatigue, but it has not been bad.  Compared to the extreme fatigue I experienced with chemo, I was able to take this in stride.

We can now move on to filling the expanders, which I took a break from during radiation.  Today I received my first fill of 25 cc's in the right (300 cc's total), and 50 cc's in the left.  The left had been completely deflated prior to starting radiation.  It still has a ways to go before it will match the right side, but she wanted to go easy this time around.  Next week she will fill the left all the way back up.  Because my skin held up so well, it looks like we will be able to continue filling the right.  This is great news since radiation can cause tightening of the skin that would not allow for additional fills.  I have some muscle tightening under my armpit and try and do lots of arm stretches during the day to keep the muscles limber.  This also helps keep the muscle behind the expanders from getting tight, which can cause reconstruction complications.   

Next steps - Continue with the fills and start Tamoxifen

My fills ended shortly after this post and, unfortunately, we were only able to do very minimal filling of the expander for the radiated side.  Looks like a small size B is what we will get.  The surgeon did ask if I was ok if she has to go smaller once we get to surgery, so we will see how things pan out in June.  

No comments:

Post a Comment