Anyway, I finally had a call with the radiation doctor today, and he said he would NOT recommend radiation for me. I did have some cells at the deep margin for one of my tumors, so technically my margin was positive. But when he talked to the surgeon, she was confident that she removed breast tissue all the way to the fascia (tissue between breast and chest wall muscles), so radiation would not be needed. He also expressed that radiation is a tradeoff, and since I am relatively young, he would be worried about the risk of secondary malignancy (cancer caused by the radiation) over a longer time outweighing the benefit of doing any radiation in this case.
So that's good news to not need radiation, but it also means I'll be jumping into more chemo soon - Xeloda. Normally this is a drug used for stage 4 cancer, but it performed well in a clinical trial for triple negative adjuvant chemo. Since a tiny bit of my residual cancer was HER2+, I'll also get Herceptin every 3 weeks through IV. Xeloda is a pill you take twice a day for two weeks, then have a week off. I'm nervous about the hit on my immune system with COVID-19 around, but of course I want to do anything I can to fight cancer! And at least I won't have to go into the doctor's office weekly for infusions.
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