Hi Christine,
I went back and read your original post and if I read it right, he had only the surgery? That chemo and radiation are scheduled or proposed? Many of us feel that radiation and chemo are critical to knocking out micromets and other areas that may not even be detectable on scans. The people who have had multiple modality treatment seem to fare better overall with lower recurrence. If he has indeed had surgery only there are many more tools in the arsenal that are available. Typically they would wait until the surgery healed before they would start radiation anyway. It doesn't seem fair to have extensive surgery and then radiation on top of it but it is quite common and in most cases quite prudent.

Recent studies with breast cancer survival have shown that the women treated with surgery and radiation fared significantly better than those with surgery alone.