Deciding on radiation or not

Seriously---radiation was a day at the beach compared to the adjuvant therapy drugs they want you to take for 5, 10 or 15 years. I had no serious issues with radiation and drove myself there, alone, 33 times. I had extremely serious issues with both Tamoxifen and Anastrozole and quit both on Aug. 30, 2023.

I should also add that I was 76 years old (or young) when I had my 33 radiation treatments. I started in late May and completed them in July, 2022. At the mid-point mark I had a few minor side effects. Up to that point, it went extremely well and at #15 it was just some minor burning that they sent me home to rest up from before continuing. I feel that radiation is the ONLY thing that may, in the long run, "save" me from a recurrence, as life was not worth living on Anastrozole and Tamoxifen was only slightly better for me. I gave a year of my life to attempting to learn to tolerate those drugs, and neither one allowed me to return to "normal" or live life without major hurdles like mood swings, teariness at inopportune moments, brain fog, excruciating pain in all my joints, but especially in my injured left knee and my back, insomnia brought on by non-stop pain and, ultimately, crippling me and putting me in a wheelchair for 6 months with an injury that most resembled a meniscus tear. Was X-rayed on 9/19; 9/21; 9/28 and 11/15. No break. Just a lot of inflammation brought on by Anastrozole. With Tamoxifen I experienced non-stop UTI infections (the antibiotics to quell them then gave me a fungal infection) and could only be awake for 3 hours a day. Compared to those side effects the minor "sunburn" I experienced after session #15 was nothing, and it is all I have to "protect" me from a potential recurrence of a tumor that was 95% estrogen positive and has a 36% probability of recurring without pills, according to my 29 onco score. Think long and hard about what you'll do if you're one of the 10 to 12% of us who cannot tolerate or adjust to the goadawful pills they want you to take for lengthy periods of time,

@boathouse What was your overall Gy dose?

@einnoc What year was your rad. tx and do you have any pulmonary fibrosis or other fibrosis? Did you do any deep breath holding to spare tissue from radiation?

@katho3 @frogjumper and everyone here....It is May 20, 2026 and I had left breast lumpectomy on April 1. My Grade 2, 2cm tumor, Invasive Ductal Carcinoma was caught in a mamogram on Feb. 18.
My doctor recommended 5 days of targeted radiation therapy followed by 5 years of the hormone blocking pills. The margins were clear and no lymph node involvement. They found a 4.8 aneurysmal dilatation on my ascending aorta in the pre-surgery MRI. I have also had pneumonia several times in the past, but that was over a decade ago.
I went to my radiation consultation, and my BP was higher than I've ever known. The nurse stated that it was dangerously high and I should go to the ER (the cancer center is at the hospital) It went even higher after that. I said I would contact my PCP the next day and request BP medication, which I did. I took it for 1 week (half dose) and ended up starting to get Stevens Johnson, which I got with ADHD medication years ago. My lips were swollen and blistered, and my tongue was sore with geographic tongue patterns. I stopped the Losartan, and that has diminished. I'm thinking, if that happened with such a common medication on half-dose in one week, perhaps I need to reassess the radiation. The do not use Proton, nor do they let you lie facing downward. The heart/aorta issue scares me as the tumor was at 10 o'clock on left side, right over my heart. ....I am not sleeping now. My husband somehow came down with Salmonella and was very sick when I was to go for the mapping appointment, so I canceled it. I felt at peace at first, but now worry I am doing the wrong thing. I am also following a plant-based diet, making the juice, salads, smoothies and recipes suggested in the Square 1 Course (Chris Beat Cancer) and on other sites, such as Food Revolution. I am truly fearful of the side effects of the radiation (one again is Stevens Johnson, and the heart and lung issues) that may not even be apparent until months or years later. I know I'm going on and on, but I just am really struggling now. It looks like the post in this thread are several years old in most cases. HOW are you doing now? Do you have regrets....were there side-effects besides the "sunburn" (which I'm not even worried about) that came up later? Thanks.