Meeting the radiation oncologist

Thursday morning, I had a meeting with Dr. White, the radiation oncologist who will be overseeing my radiation treatments. I liked her. She was very pleasant, explained everything in good detail, and politely waited for me to ask questions. She answered all of my questions about what about what to expect from the radiation treatments.

The radiation treatments start about 6 to 8 weeks after the surgery, once my breasts have healed. I'll have 30 treatments, one per day Monday through Friday, for 6 weeks. The radiation is targeted right at the points on the breast where it is needed. The treatment itself will last about 20-30 minutes, but she said to expect to be at the breast center about 45 minutes. Once a week I will meet with her to see how things are going. That will add about 15 minutes to that visit.

I learned that everyone has some side effects from the radiation. The breast will get red and tender like a sunburn. Most women don't have any real pain, just tenderness. After about the third week you generally get progressively more tired during the day, the last week being the hardest. Dr. White suggested I work 6 hours a day during the time I'm getting radiation. Leave work at 3:30, go to the breast center for an hour, then go home and rest. I'm on board with this.

One good thing I learned is that the radiation treatments tend to change the breast tissue, making it less lumpy, dense and painful. That is great news! That means that future mammograms won't be so difficult, and I may not need so many views or follow-up ultrasound/MRIs. That's one more tic in the lumpectomy column (vs. mastectomy).

But the neatest thing I learned during my visit was learning that blood oxygen saturation can be detected using a device that slips over your finger! The device is called a pulse oximeter. It detects how saturated the arterial blood is with oxygen. Mine was 100%, meaning that all hemoglobin binding sites were filled with O2. (This is good, by the way.) It blew my mind that could be detected through the fingertip. Apparently the sensor measures absorption of different wavelengths of light to make the measurement. Totally cool!