Radiation Day 10 & 11 – Halfway and Beyond!

Well I’ve officially made it halfway through my treatment! My skin is still doing really well and I don’t have any major issues. I still get some tenderness, but it’s nothing too horrible. I met with my doctor today and he said that I’m actually doing better than expected. He wouldn’t necessarily expect that my skin would be in too horrible of shape, but he said that most people do get more skin pain and irritation/itchiness by this point. So the fact that I don’t even have any itchiness is really great. Maybe this special gel is actually working very well and is worth it!

Apparently the most likely place for irritation to start is where skin folds on itself (so under-boob in my case). I believe this is because it’s more likely to stay moist, so compromised skin (from the radiation) ends up getting further irritated from not having a chance to dry out, chafing on itself, etc.

Other goings-ons

I didn’t end up posting yesterday because the cleaning ladies came today. We inevitably end up spending the entire night getting ready for them. I’ve needed to ensure I get rest during treatment because it does sap your energy reserves for sure, so it was better to get rest than to stay awake to write a blog post.

Breast cancer support group

Last week I decided to try one of the Young Survival Coalition support groups. There were about 12 women on and we each shared our breast cancer “baseball card.” I thought that was a pretty funny way to look at it, but it is so true. I know I’ve said this before, but I oddly just thought that breast cancer was breast cancer before I got it. That is just so far from the truth. I’m not sure why I wouldn’t have thought about it, but I guess I just didn’t think that much about it since I didn’t think it was going to happen to me. People generally share all of the relevant information – tumor location, tumor size, hormone receptor status, HER2 status, lymph node status, chemo before and/or after surgery, type of chemo(s), surgery before or after, mastectomy vs lumpectomy and radiation. It’s all a lot, but it determines what your experience will be like to know who you can ask for advice on specific things. It’s not like anyone would be offended, they would probably just tell you they didn’t have experience with it.

The support meeting was nice and all of the ladies were very nice. I enjoyed my time and it seemed to go by very quickly. I’m not exactly sure how helpful the support group will be for me though. At this moment in time, I had the best situation of all of the women on the call. Their stories ended up probably doing a little more to scare me than do whatever it is a support group should do for you. I also felt kind of guilty. My situation is so good! My treatment was easier and I tolerated it better, I didn’t have such extensive surgery and I have a super awesome prognosis. I felt silly and guilty for being as worried as I am sometimes when clearly other women face much scarier scenarios. I might need to go to a couple of them before I make a decision. It’s a virtual support group (which I don’t think I mentioned earlier), so it’s possible that an in-person one might be a bit better format.

Fitness progress

As I mentioned previously, I developed a cold right before I started radiation, which was the first week of November. I did a hard bike ride on the Monday, but I took a break on Tuesday. I thought I could ride and take it easy on Wednesday, but I ended up feeling worse. I took some more days off to rest and get better instead of pushing it, so I haven’t ridden as much as I would have liked in the last couple of weeks. I ended up being able to do some easy rides on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and then did a hard ride outside on Saturday. Not quite my normal load, but it seemed to be pretty good. My fitness probably peaked right before I started radiation and it’s taken a hit.

Another interesting thing is my HRV. My HRV (a relative measure of how well my autonomic nervous system is reacting physically and psychologically to my environment, per Garmin) was on a steady increase after I stopped chemotherapy. It reached 63 around the last week of October. Around Halloween weekend it started to slowly decrease and it seems to have bottomed out at 43. I think the radiation is causing an inflammatory response that is both stressful to me physically and mentally for sure. Technically, my cancer is gone so radiation might just be destroying healthy cells in my breast. But with that cellular death, my immune system will respond to try and repair the damage and remove the dead cells from my body. I guess all of that takes energy, which leaves me feeling more exhausted. While I might not feel totally drained, it could be enough to put my body under physical stress like being sick with a cold. On top of that, I’m obviously going to treatments every day and there is the emotional burden of that and my cancer diagnosis in general. It will be interesting to see how that improves after my radiation is over.

Tomorrow is a bonus day! Not only do I get radiation, but I also have my Herceptin infusion tomorrow morning! So awesome! I’m kind of expecting tomorrow to be a long day. I will come in for the infusion, but I also have an appointment with my oncologist and will need to go down to get the radiation as well. I imagine that everything will take a little bit longer than normal. Maybe I will be pleasantly surprised!