February 18th — I’m still only slightly pink from my radiation and my doctor is thrilled. He did warn me however that in rare cases, there is no “radiation reaction” (don’t say the word “burn”) until the weeks after radiation ends. He’s about to begin “boosting” the radiation to the mastectomy scar area because he said that’s a common area for local recurrence. We also discussed the fact that my triple positive tumors like to recur late (20 years or so), and who knows what medical advances there will be by then. The triple negative tumors like to recur within a few years of diagnosis with year two and year six being the most common. My radiation doc said he thinks in 20 years, the field of radiation oncology won’t be necessary because it’s so brutal and archaic in light of possible new treatments. I laughed that he’s hoping to put himself out of a job, but he said he’d be happy to go study architecture instead. I guess the field of oncology is one area all the physicians who work there would be happy to see go away. On a side note, the small plane that crashed into an office building in Austin was about a half mile from our house. That’s the building Greg used to work in years ago but other than that, we don’t have any connection to the building and we’re all fine. We’re praying for all the people who might have been injured in the crash.