Things calm down in time. Some of the initial fear goes away due to the immediacy of current circumstances. But on the other hand, your life is changed forever. Cancer never goes away. Even if you are cured, the threat and the fear remain. A friend of mine had cancer and was cured. However, even today, over ten years later, when he's down to only annual evaluations, any sort of lump or strange pain still brings back the fear. One of the things that I think most bothered Jackie was that she was no longer 'normal'. This cloud hung over our heads -- at 33 she was suddenly faced with mortality. In the first few weeks she often said "Why can't we be like all the rest of the people around us? Look at them their lives are so simple." A vast oversimplification of course, but also with a measure of truth, as anyone with life threatening problems can attest. No one seeing us was aware of our problems, and we certainly couldn't tell who of all the anonymous faces we saw were living under the same (or perhaps even worse) circumstances.

At any rate, it was time for radiation. The drain tubes were out, the healing was progressing quite well, and the prosthesis was bought.

A note on the SCAR. All the doctors and nurses who saw Jackie's mastectomy scar commented on what an excellent job our surgeon had done. From a technical perspective, we were grateful, but you should be prepared for the sight of a 6 to 7 inch long scar. You should be prepared because the human mind is drawn to look at that which is different. You can't help it -- it is different and it is shocking, the symmetry is gone. We also wondered what a "bad" scar looked like. Even through subsequent surgeries, we were blessed to never find out what bad scars looked like.

As I said before, people often don't use much common sense in obtaining medical service and in choosing medical providers. I have seen people use more common sense in checking out an automotive repair facility than they use in picking a doctor. Be informed, check with others, check with nurses. If your case warrants, find a support group and check with others in it BEFORE the treatment -- don't just assume that support begins afterward. You ARE a consumer of medical services with rights -- exercise your rights.

What about radiation. First, it's not systemic. That is, it is usually used to treat a local area, not the whole body. Next, radiation, like most cancer treatments, is aimed at KILLING cells. There are side effects since the purpose here is to kill cells in an area. The side effects are commensurate with the dose or strength of the radiation, and with the area being irradiated. So if the radiation catches the throat, there will be trouble with throat pain and with eating. Another side effect, at least for Jackie, was skin darkening and toughening. Radiation has some long term effects, as did all her treatments. This wasn't too bad for her, as the area that darkened was under clothing, but some of the reduced lung capacity and skin thickening turned out to be problems later. It's also difficult to understand the technical aspects behind this treatment. Gamma rays, electron beam therapy, rads, lasers, accelerators, etc. Hopefully as an educated medical care consumer you're comfortable with the doctor who is prescribing your treatment. Radiation is also time consuming. In Jackie's case, it required 5 trips a week to the radiation center, although once there the radiation she was getting didn't take all that long to administer The drive time round trip used up most of the time.