The one thing I have found is that I can locate plenty of posts on forums saying 'I wish I hadn't rushed into surgery' but I can't find one that said 'I wish I'd never had Radio'
.
I think one thing that gives people pause about radiation treatment is the long term consequences of exposing your body to high doses of radiation (at least that was the case for me). So I asked the Radiation Oncologist about the long term threat that the radiation cancer treatment might give me cancer in the future. His response was interesting and not something I'd heard before.
Basically (and this is simplified from what I'm sure was a dumbed down answer), while there is a risk that radiation treatment can cause cancer in the future, it's low. The reason is that when hit with high dose radiation, the cell
knows it's damaged and will try to repair the DNA. When hit by low dose radiation (e.g. radioactive fallout), the cell damage is subtle enough that the cell doesn't know the DNA is damaged - hence a significantly higher risk of future cancer developing.