I'm overdue on posting again, but here we are.  On Thursday, we had an appointment with another radiation oncologist.  This doctor is in Blue Ash and does treatments at her office and at Bethesda North, both of which are much nearer to us than Christ Hospital.  She gave us hope, however fleeting it might be, that we won't need her services.  She seemed to think that there might be a good chance that no lymph nodes will contain cancer.  Hopefully, this will be conclusively shown after the sentinel node biopsy, meaning that Cathy can forego radiation altogether.  

This doctor shared the same view as the head of research at the American Cancer Institute that if no lymph nodes are involved then the benefits of radiation do not outweigh the risks.  She did believe, though, that if even one lymph node shows cancer, that radiation would be a worthwhile treatment.  She told us that when even one lymph node is involved that research shows that radiation improves outcomes by 5-10% at the minimum.  This is greater than the 1% chance of a secondary cancer developing as a result of the radiation.  These are numbers we can understand and it's the second time in less than a week that we heard the same thing from sources in whom we feel confident.