Hi SLL2,

I'll be 75 in May. I've had radiation three times (once was when the filled both lobes of my liver with SIRIspheres (tiny radioactive beads about 1/3 the diameter of a human hair.) That was completed on 24 November last year ('13.)

Most recently, (and while still softly glowing from the SIRIspheres) I had 3 weeks of the radiation you are speaking about. That's on top of the 8 weeks I had with the initial treatments back in Nov-Dec, '09.

I'll admit that it's no fun, but it's not the end of the world as we know it either, and while the effects linger (and even worsen) for a while after the radiation ends, in short order those effects run their course and cease.

So if it were me in your shoes, I wouldn't even hesitate to get the radiation; and oh by the way, I'm one of the incurables. All 5 of my recurrences have been "distant metastases," putting me in Stage IVc, a group with 100% mortality in 5 years.

But frankly, as scary as that sounds, it's only a statistical projection, and you know about lies, damn lies and statistics... Besides which, every one of us on this planet has a 100% mortality rate, cancer or not.

But you're a free agent and what ever you decide, I (and I suspect all of us here) support you and wish you the best of luck and outcomes!

Bart