Yes, I'm definitely getting a peg tube. I talked about that with the oncologist last night.

And what the docs have said is the open and draining breast incision has to heal all the way before chemo starts. This makes lots of sense as chemo slows down or stops the healing process for something like that as well as lowering my ability to fight any remaining infection in there. Last week on Wed., the breast surgeon looked at the open incision and said she thought it would need about 3-4 more weeks(it was a very deep incision)---that would bring me to 1/2 a week to a week and 1/2 into radiation as I am counting it.

Glenn, As a staunch Red Sox fan, I forgive you for being a Yankees fan. So is my husband. (There was a lot of gloating going on by *someone* in our house last fall and it wasn't him !)

Ed, I appreciate the car analogy and that the facility is new is of a lot of concern to me but I'm not sure the anaology quite fits. Since I am being treted by a radiation oncologist from Roswell Park who has seen plenty of cases of head and neck cancer, I think a better analogy is you take experienced machanics and bring them to a new shop and then take your car there. Are you the first person to get a car like that serviced there? Yes. But the mechanics aren't seeing that car for the first time--they just got their experience elsewhere.

However in car shops they don't have the equivalent of nurses I don't think. THAT is where lack of experience might make a diff. The *nurses* won't have seen this before. I'm not happy about that--but I figure it is something I can live with for the benefit of being treated near home.

Carol, thanks for the suggestions and the urging on to fight this. I'm sure I'll be coming back for more of that as I go through this.