It's times like these that I get scared.

I met a woman the other day who is getting radiation around the same time that I am. She has very little hair, so I assumed that she was in for much the same thing. However, after we introduced ourselves, I found out that she would be done next week. Finally, today, she told me a bit of her story and frankly, it has me a little scared:

11 years ago (this woman may be in her 40's-early 50's, I would think? Maybe a little younger? I'm so bad with age) she was diagnosed with ER+ Breast cancer. Aggressive chemo and such were done and she was in remission for almost 5 years until she got ovarian cancer. She was tested and did not have the BRAC2 or BRAC3 gene and it ran more on her father's side of the family than on her mother's. I believe she said she had a hysterectomy. Then, last June, they were doing routine blood work only to find that she had no platelets. She came back in and they found more breast cancer, this time Her2+ (like mine). They stuck her on Herceptin which apparently worked beautifully for the tumor in what was left of her breast (or maybe she had the mastectomy after that?) but she is now doing radiation because of a tumor in her brain! Herceptin doesn't reach the brain!

This is a very lovely woman and I really hope that she makes it through all of this. But it has me kind of scared again. I don't want a tumor in my brain! How do they find out these things? I have a few questions to ask Beth (the Social Worker) about what happens once Radiation is done so I think I'll have to ask her this too.

Scary. Very scary. I want to get something for this woman for her last day of treatment (which is next week).

ETA: We are now 7 days/treatments (business days) from being done with Radiation! The last one is scheduled for July 12th. Today, they went from zapping the entire breast to zapping only the area where the scar (and bruising underneath) is, which seems like it's a huge chunk, but apparently it's rather small compared to others. Yikes! So far so good...aside from a little bit of shrinkage and a lot of tanning.