MAD AS HELL-- DCIS - Did Radiation take away my future chances?

If DCIS ever comes back , a chance I didn't know existed has already been taken from me!  I could possibly have had a second lumpectomy, avoided major surgery, been home the next day. But instead, with the firsts DCIS, I got a month of radiation, mostly on the entire breast. The news in this article not only blew me away, it made me furious about a possible lost chance.

Can Women Get More Than One Lumpectomy?  

 Dana-Farber  June 15, 2015  Cancer research

Like you, or your mom or your grandmother, I am over 70.  

Did no one in my area know about this when I was diagnosed?  Were one or two doctors dead set against using this information? Was everyone afraid to go outside of what has recently been the "standard of care?:Is this all brand new information?   The surgeon had assured me that the radiation oncologist would not give me radiation if I didn't need it. He didn't say how much.

True, my DCIS was perhaps not eligible, but decisions offered were limited - radiation or go home.

If you are or your mom is over 70, read the fourth paragraph.  Read it again. I was over 70, and no one, mentioned any of those possibilities.

 In fact, read it all.

 "Women who are diagnosed for the first time with breast cancer

 in multiple spots traditionally have had a mastectomy. 

However, a new trial at Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center 

offers these patients multiple lumpectomies followed by radiation, 

rather than removing the entire breast."

From INSIGHT Dana-Farber publication


I wish you health.