radiation therapy surprises

I just finished 33 radiation therapy sessions directed at my left breast. I underwent a lumpectomy for a very small malignancy (DCIS) at the 8:30 location. I was given a 10 percent higher dosage of radiation than normal because the cancer was Grade 3. I experienced little fatigue during the course of my treatment, but there were some surprises.

During the treatment my arms were raised above my head. After a little more than a week of therapy, redness started to develop on my left shoulder/upper forearm. This improved on the weekends, but after another ten or so treatments it really grew uncomfortable. I felt certain it was connected to the radiation so I decided to do something to try to protect myself, especially since I knew that whatever radiation could be hitting me could not be nearly as intense as that directed toward the treated area . I went out to the garden and filled a quart Ziploc bag with soil and covered it with a little cloth case that I sewed up. Fortunately, they permitted me to place it over the affected area. From that time on the area begin to heal. My skin peeled a bit, but three weeks later the area looks good except for a little brown "shadow."

The second surprise was that about a week after I started using my earth shield, I developed mucositis on the left side of my mouth. It came on suddenly. At that point in my treatment they shifted the radiation beam to focus more directly on the area where the cancer had been. I moved my earth shield to cover my neck and face, and from that point on the mucositis began to improve, although it took about 10 days to fully recede.

A physician friend had told me that when she had radiation therapy to the breast, she experienced significant heartburn. I also experienced heartburn, but I would not call it significant. After I started using the earth shield, it diminished so that by the end of the treatment I had no heartburn at all.