I don't think anyone on this board would ever say "I told you so". Amy, perhaps you haven't been around long enough to see how genuinely giving and supportive people are when someone gets a recurrence but believe me there is no gloating over it.

I am happy for both of you that you got good expert advice that said you did not need radiation. I'm also wondering if the reason people (not just here but Gino's first oncologist)anecdotally beleive there's a relationship between youth and aggressive cancers is because they remember the young people who end up dying from cancer much more vividly--the tragedy seems so great. This alone could account for what, in my field of psychology, is called an "illusory correlation" between a young age and aggressive cancer.

Also, there's a difference betwen the advice that makes sense for a young person with advanced stage cancer and a young person with a less advanced stage (such as Amy and maybe Gino depending on how his stage is viewed). For example, someone here in responding to Amy or Gino (I forget which) brought up Heather as an example. I wasn't here when Rosie first posted about her but when I did my own search on the hazards of radiaiton when I was faced with this decision a eyar ago, I ended up finding those posts.

Contrary to what someone here said in the posts to Gino, Heather was never diagnosed with an early Stage cancer. She was stage IV. Obviously someone who is stage IV, regardless of age, will need aggressive treatment. It seemed like a lot of people here were remembering her tragic case when responding to you, Amy, but I think your case was very different.

The fact is there are no guarantees with this disease one way or another. You can treat your disease as aggressively as you can and still get a recurrence or you can avoid radiation and chemo and be OK. None of the decisions are easy and all of them are scary. I think it's most scary when you seem to be in a gray area and are getting differing opinions. I was definitely there for a while until I got more opinion that piled up on the "get radaition" side--I'm glad for both of you that for now, your additional opinions piled up on the other side.

Nelie