Newly Diagnosed

Hi,
I just finished treatment for vaginal cancer in May. I read this and I realize you have already started treatment, hopefully not without some of your questions answered.
I answered a post on the link below with a lot of my history and treatment experiences, so you might want to read that, but I can answer some of the things you asked directly in this post.
(link to other post)
http://www.cancer.org/asp/messageBoards/msg_global.asp?navToScreen=msg_1_1&navFromScreen=msg_1_4&txtTopicPath=cat-94A8F3A6228B41178CD9E582C1F467F4/mb-32728338E1AA42B9AC65422E35C7E41E/topic-A2E083A5701F48F983E10A1F575A9725&txtDiscussionId=discussion-259A371F2D2F4A1C8ECF6623B60169B7

I didnt have much pain prior to diagnosis. What I did have, was the tumor dying, and basically leaving me with the sensation that I was urinating nearly constantly because the fluid would come out. That sounds so horrible and it was, and I hope you really dont have that symptom.
I had very little pain from the actual cancer.
I understand how talking about the pain increases the anxiety, especially when you already have pain. I am not going to give you horror stories, but the pain toward the end of radiation was not fun. I did have about 33 treatments so mine lasted longer than yours will and hopefully that will help yours to be less painful. They also gave me some great drugs and did everything they could to keep my pain under control. I continued to have pain for a few months following, but it wasnt really where or how I expected it to be. I still have some and its mostly in the tendons of my legs and my bones sometimes. I have some vaginal scarring that makes things painful, and the doctors and nurses are working with me now to try to keep the scar tissue broken up so I can heal normally. I am going to start physical therapy soon for the pain, and I am looking forward to that. Anything that helps is worth the pain I think.
My anticipation of the pain was worse than the actual pain, and but unlike you I had not been able to really find anything on how bad the pain could be from radiation. It really wasnt as bad as I feared, and my doctors were wonderful dealing with the pain I did have. Not saying it wasnt bad, but it was a very controlled bad, it could have been so much worse I imagine.
I know near the last two weeks they did give me the option of taking some time off to allow the burns to heal some and then resuming, but I didnt want to have it get better then worse, so I just toughed out the last little bit. Once the external radiation ended, it was, it seemed, no time at all before the skin, muscle, intestine pain lessened. Almost like a really bad sunburn pain I thought. It lingered a bit, then it sort of just quit. I have tightness in my leg tendons, some limited range of motion in my hips now, and sometimes pain in the joint of my hip. That too gets less and less frequent and less severe as time goes on. So it has been 6 months and I use pain medications (other than ibuprofen about once a week) very rarely. The discharge is totally gone, and the pain I have now is what I call "avoidable pain", which means I only really have pain when I have to make sure the scar tissue isnt getting out of control...

Best Wishes and I hope I helped you some.
Let me know if there are any other questions you think I might be able to answer. I can at least tell you what happened to me, for good or bad.
I will be thinking about you.

Kimmie