Radiation Therapy is Underway

Holly had her first radiation therapy session yesterday. This kicks off her three week long therapy schedule, where she'll be at the hospital every weekday for treatment sessions. After her initial surgery there were no cancer cells found in the breast tissue that surrounded the tumor, but this is still an important step in ensuring all traces of cancer are removed.

The treatment is localized on her chest area around where the tumor and lymph nodes were removed. The radiation damages the DNA of both healthy cells and cancer cells, but the cancer cells are less able to repair the damage done by the radiation making this an effective and common tool for battling cancer.

The first session took just over an hour while her treatment team made some final tweaks and adjustments. The remaining sessions will be closer to 20 minutes in length. The treatment itself is painless but will likely cause skin discomfort and fatigue as she gets further into the sessions as the damage accumulates over the duration of the therapy.

This is one of the last major treatments she'll be doing, followed only by hormone therapy which will continue for a few years but with far less frequent trips to the hospital.

We are very excited to get this underway as it signals that we're close to the end of her major treatments and are very much looking forward to getting back to normal life.

Emery participated in the Terry Fox run this year, Holly was very touched when he came home and showed her who he chose to run for.