Keri's Metastatic Breast Cancer Story: First Radiation Treatment for Cancer in the Sacrum

My name is Doug, and this is the story of my wife Keri Haberstroh. Keri was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005 at the age of 25. This is an update on Keri's first radiation treatment, after we learned that her cancer had spread.

Subject: One Down

Sent: Monday, April 3, 2006 2:08 PM

Hi Everyone,

Just thought I'd write to let you all know that the first treatment went well this morning. I was in and out in about half an hour. The actual treatment only takes a couple of minutes, but the set up takes a little longer. I don't feel anything and I don't see anything.

The machine makes a buzzing sound and that's how I know when they are doing the radiation. They do my right hip first then my left hip. When the machine turns to do my left hip it's kind of cool what I get to look at because they screwed in a part on the machine that looks like a smiley face. So I get to end with a smile looking at me. Then I'm all done.

Nothing to it. I'm a little tired today, but that's only because I didn't sleep well last night. Other than that not any changes. The nurse even said that since they are doing such a small area she didn't really expect me to have even too much skin irritation so it's looking like this may be easier than I think.

It will get faster the more often I go and especially with it being every day. The only thing I have to watch for is that when I go in the dressing room to put my gown on there's someone that just got finished with their radiation that's taking theirs off and same for me when I go in to take mine off. They just pass people through the treatments like that.

I will see the doctor every Wednesday to talk and I guess do checkups. That's all I really know for now.

My pain is still there, but I expect that to be so at least for another week or so since the treatments obviously need to compound onto each other for effectiveness. Not much else to it. We'll see how things are next week after I've had a few treatments. It's really weird though because they are so different than chemo. Quick and painless. No needles or anything. I'll keep you posted though on how things go. Talk again soon.

Take Care,

Keri