Hi everyone.
its been a while since I last posted. I had a radical hysterectomy on the 15th August. My recovery has gone really well. On Wednesday (6 weeks post op), my consultant rang with with biopsy results.
My surgical staging is 1B3 squamous cell carcinoma. She removed 18 lymph nodes on the left and 24 on the right. Thankfully all of them came back clear.
However, she said I had LVSI in the tumour (cancer cells spreading into the blood vessels in the tumour). So I have to 5 weeks of radiotherapy as preventative treatment. She said that I would possibly also need chemotherapy but this was still being reviewed.
I have an appointment with my new oncology doctor on Tuesday, and I’ll have a lot of questions for him. In my mind, the fact that the MDT are even discussing the possibility of my having chemo means I should have it! I don’t want the risk of reoccurrence.
There are a few things I am really concerned about, and I was hoping for honest feedback.
1/ Menopause and managing it quickly (I still have my ovaries)
2/ My sex life never being the same again due to the radiotherapy damaging my vagina.
3/ Hair loss from chemotherapy. Will I lose my hair?
4/ Lymphoedema. I’ve had a lot of nodes already removed and haven’t had an issue. I’m worried that the radiotherapy will massively increase the chance of me getting this.
I really appreciate you taking the time to read my post and to let me know what your own experience of chemoradiation has been like.
xx
Hi Meme85
I can only speak about my own experience of chemoradiation, which was 32 sessions of external radiotherapy and 4 sessions of Cisplatin chemo. To answer your specific questions-
I was post menopausal when I was diagnosed, so didn’t have to deal with the menopause
Radiotherapy caused no damage to my vagina at all. I did use the dilators after treatment to ensure everything was kept open and supple. Things were complete fine after treatment,
Cisplatin chemo doesn’t cause hair loss, and it didn’t happen for me.
Despite having more radiotherapy than most ladies, I didn’t experience any lymphoedema. Some others can, of course.
Radiotherapy is the main treatment for cervical cancer, with chemo being a low dose of Cisplatin which increases the efficacy of the radiotherapy, so when I was scheduled for 5 treatments but couldn’t have the last one due to my low blood count, this wasn’t rescheduled and I was told it wasn’t too important as I’d already had 4.
You say you don’t want the risk of recurrence, but unfortunately not even this treatment can completely eliminate that risk. Once you’ve had cancer, there is always a risk of recurrence even if it’s very small. My cancer recurred 9 months after chemoradiation treatment ended, after I’d had a Ned scan result at 3 months. So it can happen, although I was very unlucky.
Hope this helps and that others will share their stories.
Sarah xx
