Me again. If chemo clears everything away why will I need radiotherapy afterwards. sorry if I sound a bit dim.
Hi poodlepatch
I am posting a couple of links for you which may help to answer some of your queries, the first is a link to a BCC web page about surgery and includes some information about lymph node surgery, the second is the radiotherapy publication:
ttp://www.breastcancercare.org.uk/breast-cancer-breast-health/treatment-side-effects/surgery/
Best wishes
Lucy
My understanding is that the number of lymph nodes vary from person to person. I had 2/24 nodes infected and ended up having chemotherapy and radiotherapy. I believe that the radiotherapy clears up any stray cells in the immediate area of the tumor and chemo mops up any strays in the rest of your body. That is how it was explained to me by my BCN.
I’m between chemo and clearance with affected nodes. It’s in my neck too, so hopefully rads will nuke it.
The number of nodes varies between individuals.
They took 24 of mine - I had 2 benign samples pre chemo but my team decided to remove as I had enlarged nodes on CT and MRI scans.
I had scarring in 1 on pathology, but more may have been affected initially as I had chemo first.
well after all my worrying about my nodes it turned out well. They originally sampled 4 nodes of which 2 had microscopic cancer in them. Got my results of my nodes clearance this week & they didn’t find any sign of cancer in any of the other 18 nodes. I’m very relieved & it does just go to show that the nodes were doing their job in catching the cells before they travelled to far. Next step for me now is oncology appt on 7th sept for next stage planning which i think is chemo,though i have no idea what sort etc. Thanks so much for all your advice everyone. x