Are you feeling lucky, punk?

Alright. Decision has been made. I met with the radiologist to discuss getting radiotherapy to mop up any extra cancer cells that might still be floating around. We laughed, we joked, but mostly we talked about dying. Getting radiation reduces the chance that the cancer comes back. With the chemo I've already had, plus one month of radiation treatment, I stand a 94% of being Hodgkin's free, forever. Nice. The drawback is that I have a fair size mediastinal mass close to my coronary arteries - in layman's terms that means the monkey face bastards have set up shop right next to the ol' blood pumper. Even though modern radiation treatments are pretty targeted, I would still receive a significant dose to my area near my heart, as well as to the blood vessels in my neck. This means a greatly increased risk of heart disease and stroke later in life, as well as a considerable risk of secondary cancer in the lungs from the radiation. It also means probably losing my thyroid gland. I'm not really sure what this does but it must be important. Ronaldo has a messed thyroid and it made him fat, so much so that the fans started shouting 'el Gordo' at him. Poor Ronaldo.

Avoiding the radiation means going for another 4 treatments of chemo, and the risk of a relapse goes up, to 14%.  It's a tough call really, should I accept a small increase in risk now for a more healthy outlook 20 years down the road? How are you supposed to make these sorts of choices at 35 years old? I'd much rather be thinking about physics, or sandwiches. I asked the radiologist for advice and he quoted Dirty Harry to me. "Are you feeling lucky, punk?" I suppose I am, since I decided to skip the rads and go with the chemo. 86% seems like a pretty good gamble, but I guess only time will tell if I got this one right.