Hello, I am 53 years old. I was diagnosed with breast cancer and ended up having a left breast masectomy. I went through my chemotherapy (and of course went bald) and had my last chemo on January 15 2008. Now the next step radiation. I am a difficult case for radiation. See I have one good lung that is on my left side and the pressure in that is only about 56 %, this is because I do not have pulmonary veins. I have what is called sematare syndrome. This means my blood goes down to my left chamber and then I have a small hole between my right and left chamber and some blood drips into the other chamber. Anyway my blood does not circulate the same as a normal person so this keeps my pressure down. I did some research and found out that tomatherapy radiation is suppose to be very good because it is not suppose to hit any vital organs. There is only one place in MN that has a tomatherapy machine and that is the Univ of MN. After going to my first radiation doctor and discussing my situation he told me he would not recommend IMRT it is to dangerous for me and would do to much damage to my lung. This could cause me to end up in a wheelchair, oxygen for life, lung transplant or death. These options are not to appealing. He also recommended the tomatherapy. I checked it out and now my doctor at the University is calling me and telling me that so far he has not been able to get the numbers down that much lower with tomatherapy then they did with IMRT planning. He is still working on it but I am very scared. Now if they do not or cannot get the numbers as low as they like it looks like I will have to pass on radiation. If I pass on radiation then this will low my chances of survival. I just do not know what to do. Can anyone out there talkk to me or email me. Any advice. If I would of had the money I think I would of just gone out to the cancer care center in chicago they have done this longer and might have better option. I am so scared.
Mari B.
