Day 23 – My Healing Journey

During my downtime between the end of chemo treatments and my visit with the oncologist, I did some additional research on radiation treatments. I was still on the fence about whether I wanted to subject myself to further torture.

I had made the decision early on that I wasn’t going to tell my clients about my diagnosis and health situation.  My contention was that since I was already working from my home office, no one really needed to know and I rarely made on site visits except to drop off completed work.  I could mail it or get one of my employees to deliver them for me if I had to.  There were only a very select few that I told and I only told them because they had become close friends over the years and were very supportive and wanted to help.

I was inundated with work and not able to physically sit up long enough to do more than a few hours of work at a time.  I decided to contact this specific client to tell them that I would no longer be able to help them and that they needed to find someone else to take over their accounting.  I told her I just couldn’t keep up and I had no idea when I would be able to catch up. I told her the reason and she told me she would not accept my resignation.  She said she wasn’t worried about it and she was confident that we would work it out over time.  

She was such a kind and caring individual and I really appreciated the fact that she felt that way. That same afternoon, there was a knock at the door and there was a man holding a bouquet of flowers the size of Texas! She had sent a stunningly beautiful bouquet along with a touching note of concern expressing her wishes for my recovery.

She mentioned that she had a dear family friend who just happened to be a radiation oncologist and she volunteered to have him contact me so he could answer any questions I might have. This was just yet another example of the Universe organizing things and having the pieces fall into place at the right time.

She arranged for the doctor to call me and we had a very nice conversation. I told him of my research and my overwhelming reluctance to do the follow-up radiation.  He provided me with overwhelming information and statistics of those who only did the chemotherapy versus both treatments. He essentially said that the radiation was the easy part, but I still wasn’t convinced as I had watched my brother-in-law go through radiation treatments for prostate cancer. He was barely able to work, and the minute he got home, he had to go to bed because he was so exhausted. I wasn’t up for any additional pitfalls, adverse side effects and negative outcomes as I was already more exhausted than I wanted to be.   

We talked about longevity and we talked about how the chemo and radiation worked hand-in-hand to eradicate the cancer cells.  I expressed my fears about damaging my heart and lungs with the treatment being so close those organs and I also expressed my concerns about the burns associated with radiation and everything else in between. 

I was grateful for his candid replies, and for his world of knowledge in his field after a 40 year career. I decided to think further about it and told him I would contact him a few weeks later.  After a second conversation, I had to admit his arguments were compelling enough so I made the decision to do the 30 days of radiation. 

What I learned from him is that after you have the surgery to remove the lumps, there are still tiny little microscopic cells floating around that area called daughter cells. They can be benign initially but some can be true cancerous cells.  They are undetectable on an MRI but can also redevelop into cancerous cells over time. This is the purpose of the radiation, to essentially follow up and eradicate those cells that are left behind before they have a chance to decide what they want to do and where they might want to migrate to in your body.  That is how cancer travels to different organs in your body; quietly and undetectable for quite some time.

At that point, I was on board for the treatments; it would give me some additional peace of mind about those daughters cells.  Now it was just a waiting game before I started those treatments.