have received many apologies from medical staff because of my nine week wait for radio. Apparently they made a mistake and scheduled it after chemo that I wasn’t having. Government guidlines are 42 days after surgery and sorry won’t help if I get a local recurrence. The thing is I asked about when I would have radio and was fobbed off and told I had to heal first. I will have had over 9
weeks healing time after sugery for agressive breast cancer, a diaease my Mum died of. I am so upset and all the medical staff will do is to apologise and arrange meetings.
Do you have a date now Kit? It must all be so stressful for you, especially if they wont listen. I had 6 weeks between surgery and radiotherapy and I must say I was glad it was well healed, so I hope for you they will now get on with it and you can put it behind you.
If not, I would pop into the PALS office at the hospital and see if they can help you sort this out.
Jayne xx
thank you yep, I begin on March 26th. The hospital has called a private meeting with me, the oncologist and rep from the surgical team to apologise and reassure.
I know you must feel worried about the difference the delay has made - but it might not be much - try and re-assure yourself with the thought that if you had undergone chemo you still wouldn’t have been having rads on the 26th March.
Good luck
Hi, I waited 13wks between surgery and rads, due to a waiting list!! I had a melt down but I spoke to bc surgeon who gave me assurance that it wouldn’t make much difference. I suppose only time will tell,maybe you need to get assurance also, I did start tamoxifen one week after surgery so did feel I had some back up, karen x
Hi Kit
The waiting is horrible and worrying but unfortunately I don’t think its uncommon at all.
I had various waits, the first being between initially seeing my GP and starting treatment - a whole 2 months! With a very large tumour (8 cm x 6cm) and the cancer in my lymph nodes I was freaking out at that wait. There was a delay with biopsy and then a delay with the chemo - terrible.
Then I had problems post mastectomy with my wound opening up so my next lot of chemo was delayed by 3 weeks or so. Then I had a wait for rads of 6 weeks. So all in all there were quite a few ‘waits’.
It honestly didn’t help me to keep reading about celebrities who were getting all their treatment straight away when some of us mere mortals were having waits.
I was reassured that in the scheme of things these weren’t significant. I was told by my surgeon that quite often breast cancer has been there for nearly 2 years or more before we realise so I can see that this may be true. I think probably the greater problem is a psychological one.
I’m now 2.5 years post treatment and I don’t think about it much at all.
The main thing is that you have an appointment and it’s not long to go and before you know it you’ll have finished your treatment.
take care, Elinda x
In acient times… errrr 2002 It was pretty standard to wait that time or even longer, I waited 16 weeks because they didn’t have enough machines in those days, sounds like a total mix up, hope they can budge now to fit in with guidelines a little closer.
Good luck with it, the only bonus you have is your scar tissue will be that much older and be able to withstand it a little better
Clare xxx
Hi,
I had my mx september last year and didn’t start rads til early Jan this year so thats quite a long wait the main reason for that was because I could’nt get my arm into position after surgery so had to do physio for a couple of months to get my arm behind my head as they also needed to zap my armpit, I already had secondaries from the start dx with primary back in March last year the team at the hospital didn’t seem too worried, please don’t worry about this I am sure all will be well.
Sending you love and light
sarahlousie xx
I just finished chemo and will have a MX mid April, I was told I will need to wait 7-8 weeks till i get rads after the MX due to foreseebale wound healing problems because of ne-adj chemo. I have since read that people on the forum are having rads four weeks after MX despite neo-adj chemo and seroma and was wondering if the business at my hopsitla is the real reason.
There have been several threads on this topic. In the West of Scotland there is, as far as I can ascertain, only one hospital that offers rads, people come in from the islands, up from the borders, down from the highlands… I happen to live ten minutes walk away, I am extremely lucky. The wait time for rads is typically 8-12 weeks, despite this hopsital having something like a dozen treatment rooms on the go all day every day 8:30 to 5:30. The oncs know this and work hard to get people seen as early as possible, and I understand that evidence shows their patients do as well as people elsewhere.
I had FEC-T neoadjuvant, mx and immediate LD recon and started my rads roughly 9 weeks after surgery. My onc referred me as ‘ready’ when he saw me a week post surgery, at which point I still could not raise my arm properly, but this got me into the system straight away. By six weeks post surgery I was properly healed and my arm movement fine, but had either not been at the scheduled start date (i.e. 9 weeks), they would have deferred rads for a week at a time until I was ready, they saw no problem with this.
Try not to worry, we are given superb treatment in this country, and they won’t delay anything that needs to be done urgently.
I’m slightly different in that I had WLE in Novermber then had to have more surgery to remove lymph nodes. I started chemo in January. I asked my onc last week in clinic when rads would start out of curiosity and was given a date to start 3 weeks after last chemo with rads planning in 2 weeks. There does seem to be a wide variation for start dates.
RevCat, only 1 hospital offering rads. That is quite shameful, surely the gov need to wake up and do something.
Scotianne, to clarify, I think there are three rads centres in Scotland, the largest (I think) being WoSCC which is the one I mentioned. I guess we have to accept that each part of the UK managing its own health budgets ‘cuts its cloth’ differently, and on different ‘measures’ different areas will be ‘better’…
Unfortunately the hospital RevCat is talking about is the one I go to. We’re in the Highlands, a vast area but not much population.
I think Glasgow has a back log as well.
If there is one little consulation for me, the onc said the machines are new … state of the art kind if thing?? Don’t know.
Um, actually I’m talking about the one in Glasgow… th eother two are Inverness and Edinburgh
Sorry RevCat, thought you were meaning up my way.
No worries! I was a bit vague!!!
As you say, all the linacs in Scotland are quite new… allegedly people choose to come to WoSCC from the east which makes our delays longer… patient choice and all that!