Cathy, The chemo information you got frustrates me. There is no question it makes the treatment much harder but it also makes the treatment much more effective. If it is supervised by people who know what they are doing, and any possible infections are controlled as soon as they occur, you will never have to have radiation stopped because of chemo, although you may not be able to do all the chemo treatments, which is what happened to me. There's data that shows that doing two of the three is almost equally effective however.

Your doctor is right that right now, there is no clearly effective treatment involving chemo alone. The chemo is mainly useful in making the radiation more effective. It seems to me given the good data about that, it should be recommended for radiation for early stage cancers where there is a high than usual risk of recurrence (which there obviously is in your case) more often. And I know there are some mdeical oncologists at top CCCs who think so too. Which is why I had it!

New Yorker, is the doctor telling your mother she does not need radiation with this recurrene at a CCC? if not, I would certianly recommend a second opinion.

Nelie