Treatment Schedule
Scheduling is one of the greatest challenges of radiation treatment. For radiation to the breast and lymph node areas, you will receive treatment once a day, five days a week, for five to seven weeks. Partial-breast radiation is usually given twice a day for one week. For treatment to areas where the cancer has spread, daily treatments for two to three weeks are the norm.
Expert Quote
Meet our Medical Experts »“Normal might not feel so normal after the diagnosis of breast cancer turns your life upside down! But the members of your radiation team will work with you to try to minimize the disruption caused by this five- to seven-week treatment process.”
Marisa Weiss M.D.
Since your doctor worked out most of the technical considerations of your therapy during the planning stage, your treatment sessions will run quite smoothly. Once a week you might have a longer appointment so your doctor and nurse can talk with you, examine you, and make various recommendations to ease your way through the process. Each week, pictures of the treatment field are taken to verify that everything is going properly. Your blood counts might be checked in some situations.
Treatment centers try to help you keep to your normal day-to-day routine during radiation therapy. The radiation staff will try to give you a daily appointment time that is as convenient as possible for you. Most treatment centers open by 7:30 or 8 a.m. and stay open until the end of the workday, Monday through Friday. Some centers provide earlier or later hours—just ask. To give you some time off during therapy and to allow your normal tissue time to recover, treatment centers are not open on weekends. Most doctors try to start the first treatment by Wednesday to make sure you get at least three doses in the first week.
Why does a course of radiation take so long?
Getting radiation in small daily fractions of the total prescribed helps protect your normal cells. Because you receive many small doses of radiation, rather than a few large ones, your normal cells in the area being treated suffer less damage and have more time to repair themselves.
Radiation works best when cells are growing and making new cells. Giving the treatments over time maximizes the chances that the radiation will hit cancer cells when they're growing.
To get the full benefit of radiation therapy, it's important for you to keep all of your scheduled appointments.
Radiation therapy is most effective when it is continuous and a full course is completed. If you have a significant skin reaction, your doctor might suggest a few days off from treatment. Also, if the weather is so bad that you cannot safely get to the treatment center, it's OK to miss a session. In these cases, the missed sessions will be added to the end of treatment.
Special schedule requests
Keeping to a five-day-a-week schedule of appointments for radiation can become a burden, especially during the summer. One way to ease the demands of this routine is to ask your treatment center to schedule sessions early on Fridays and late on Mondays. These extra hours give you an extended weekend and might make the rigors of treatment more bearable. Many treatment centers are willing to be flexible, especially if it helps you keep each scheduled appointment.
You might have a badly needed vacation planned that seems to conflict with the start or completion of treatment. Work with your doctor to coordinate the treatment schedule with your vacation.