Hey guys. Im going to word this blog a little differant so that it will stand out more and hopefully i will get more replies.
As i never recieved chemo or Radiation after my cancer, I cannot help my friend with the questions she is throwing at me.
She has been having radiation ( 5 week course ) with 3 sessions to go. She has been feeling and looking really great but people that have never had this sort of thing keep filling her head with all sorts of things.
She is just wanting to know if there is any bad after affects as the Drs have told her nothing and others keep telling her the worst is yet to come. ( nice of them huh ) I would love to put her mind at peace, as she is a real worry wart.
Any feed back that i can give her will be well appreciated.
Thanks. Jill D New Zealand
FormerMember
Sorry not sure I can help, I am due to have radio but not until after my lymph nodes have been removed. So I am a little way behind your friend. There are probably quite few people on here who can help and I am sure they will.
The advice feedback that I have received from nurses who I work with, my trials/mac nurse and friends from this site is; that it can make you tired, it can irritate your skin; people who have had radio have told me that they found it fine and that its easier than chemo. But we are all different and our reactions are different. I have been on the same chemo as others, started at the same time and we have compared notes - we have had different side effects.
I think your friend should make a list of all her questions and queries then arrange to talk to her nurse or radiographer or oncologist.
I have completed my radiotherapy for bowel cancer and it went very well until I got radiation burns during the last week. Eeveryone is different - radiotherapy continues to work after the course is complete but if I was your friend I would not go looking for problems which might not really exist. That's not to say you don't seek advice with any concerns - they are used to solving problems - that's what they are there for.
You need to be specific about your friend's type of cancer as radiotherapy is very different for different types of cancer.
I have personal experience of RT for breast cancer but only as a carer (spouse) for head & neck cancer.
In an internal cancer like Prostate or Head & Neck, the purpose of the radiotherapy is to shrink or atrophy the tumour and/or cancerous area where tumour was removed and kill any remaining cancer cells while leaving little possibility of a recurrence in that place.
However in Breast Cancer, once the tumour is surgically removed the cancer has theoretically been taken away. If lymph nodes show signs of cancer, then Chemotherapy is given to clean out the whole body and again, theoretically the cancer has gone.
As a final clean-up, radiotherapy is applied to the skin and flesh immediately below the skin to "mop-up" any remaining cancer cells that have escaped the chemo (and possibly accidentally spread by the surgery).
So the radiation for BC is less intense and in bombing terms is area bombing rather than a laser guided bomb on a particular target.
How does it feel? well it is like being on the beach all day and feeling whacked out in the evening - except the whacked out feeling doesn't go away.
Slap on the E45 or Aqueous Solution morning and night and skin should be fine - only rarely do people have problems iwth RT for BC.
It is accumulative and you feel as if you are glowing at the end, and this carries on for only about another week after the last treatment.
negatives are that you feel tired, you need to stay out of the sun or wear thick shirts as the sun's rays go straight through thin cotton and RT is very efficient at removing hair.
positives are that it doesn't hurt and I used to go for treatment during lunchtime from work - and it removes unwanted hair very nicely.
The tan effect may well take over a year to fade - I'm still waiting.
If your friend doen't have BC, please specify the cancer and I'm sure someone else will give a personal experience.
I too had radiation therapy for 5 weeks as part of my treatment for Breast Cancer last October/November . I had some of the common side effects, such as incredible tiredness, skin darkening and so on. If you have a look on this website, most of these are well documented in the information guides about radiotherapy, along with advise on how best to ameliorate them.
I also got badly burned, although I understand this is far less common side effect. The burns took 6 weeks to heal and covered an area of about 10 inches by 6 over my lower breast and ribs. Taking an anti inflammatory helped with the pain this caused, and I dressed this area (or my husband did) with Mepitel dressings, secondary dressings on top, held in place by a body sized medical mesh stocking. These were provided for me by my GP on prescription, after treatment as the blisters didn't appear until my first day after the treatment was completed, and my treatment hospital was a 40 mile trip away, so too far to go back just to see the radiographers there.
Other side effects of my cancer treatment have included, Lymphodema, and Cellulitis.
The skin where the burns were is still very thin and glassy in appearance, and I suspect it will always look a bit odd and have a distinctive scar.
