Fall 2015 Rads
Comments
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You can do this Georgie!
Bluedog - Of course it's not rads! *wink* I hope the itching subsides soon (and I hope it's not shingles like EFox mentioned!)
Courtleboo - Yeah, I heard about how the nipple peels. My RO said that radiation affects the area around the nipple differently than the rest of the breast. I've just noticed the areola area having a different texture: hard. What happens next? What might be coming down the road on this?
I'm on Day 13 of 30. Still nothing to report here (except the areola is changing texture). I'm using Miaderm 4x a day. That sounds like a lot, but I'm still waking up in the night --an old habit from my chemo days of having to drink a gallon of water a day -- and I put the Miaderm on in the night. I'm also sleeping bare-chested at night, which is very cooling. I'm keeping a rolled up piece of very soft t-shirt material under my treatment breast. I heard that skin-skin contact makes the breast burn and peel more, so I'm hoping this will help with that.
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Hi everyone - had treatment #1 today. Nothing to report...I guess it goes downhill from here. 27 more to go!
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Sherri, thanks for the heads up about shingles. Ugh, I hope it's not that. So painful, right?
Sloan, thanks for the encouraging words.0 -
Hello everyone. I hope it's ok to join the "party"......ok, not so much a party. I had the first radiation treatment of 30 today. Very few people in my life even know I am going through this, so helping others and having a place to vent would be awesome. Wishing everyone the best!
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Sophrosyne: very much OK to join the party....and sometimes it is! Venting, ranting, dissolving into a puddle of tears, panicking completely, and sometimes joy and laughter.
And I do now offer a heartfelt apology for missing your first message, way back on October 11th! My only excuse was that my brain was addled from antibiotics....I'm better now.
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thank you so much queenmomcat for the welcome and no worries! I am just glad to have a place to be "me"...whatever that is right now.
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Hello all:
Looks like I will start rads the week after Thanksgiving, On December 2bd..so just checking in. I guess that is still Fall and not Winter, right? Looking forward to the tips and the support.
Best to all
Octogirl
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Octogirl: welcome to the group, and I for one am glad that you've reached the point of starting radiation. As, I expect, are you?
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oh yes, definitely glad...though I still have one chemo to go Monday! After that, I get a few weeks of rest, just in time for Thanksgiving. Maybe my taste buds will have returned by then. One can only hope....
Octogirl
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Your taste buds and a lot of other things. And you wouldn't be the first one to join two different seasonal rads groups.
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Octogirl ans Sophrosyne welcome. I am sorry that you are here. Feel free to vent, share, etc. We will do what we can to get you through this. I finished up last week with very little problem Fatigue has been my biggest issue but I didn't do chemo so this might not be a bad for you. The hardest part has been emotional. I learned a lot of helpful tips to make this more tolerable. The best tip for me was the cooling cloth. My breast by week 2 was feeling hot and that really helped cool it down.
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Hi, Octo, Sophro et al--you will get through this just fine.
3 zaps down, 13 to go. My car is now on autopilot up Ridge Ave. to Evanston Hosp. But it is frustrating that it rules all my weekdays--one of my best friends (who is a brittle diabetic with COPD) suddenly went into fluid overload and is in the ICU at Northwestern Hosp. downtown (closest to her home in Lincoln Park) for respiratory distress. Can't see her at all tomorrow, since I have to hang around the house in the a.m. for a bunch of deliveries and make sure the landscapers don't rip out and discard the rest of my annual herbs before I can dig them up; in the afternoon is my rads and then I committed to picking up a friend to go to a concert at City Winery in early evening. (Tom Paxton's farewell tour, for you folkies; Michael Miles, who played on my first CD, is opening). Earliest I can see my friend is Friday, and I'm stuck in the western 'burbs all day Sat. hosting a songwriters' event. At least DH (who is her internist at a different hospital--her husband is a retinologist at DH's hospitals and is both DH's colleaugue and eye doc as well as friend) can come with me Sunday to visit--it's a rare weekend off for him.
Anyway, yesterday and today they took X-rays beforehand. Met with my RO yesterday (will be doing that weekly). He says that there's a huge seroma in my tumor cavity, which is what's probably accounting for the lion's share of breast sensitivity and why “Louise" is no smaller than “Thelma" despite having a chunk carved out. He's not worried--says that's common in lumpectomies and it should resorb, whether or not it's replaced by scar tissue. Meanwhile, the lumpectomy scar and immediately surrounding area don't seem to be irritated yet, but I'm still using Aquaphor in the changing room right after each session. At night I was using Jason's 84% Aloe cream, but I have decided I can't stand the smell (like stale cheap perfume), so I'll mix some CVS aloe gel with coconut oil and use that instead. No way I can sleep braless--it hurts to have Louise jiggling and I need to sleep on my sides as well as my back. In my 64 years, never did get the hang of sleeping nude, though DH never did get the hang of sleeping in PJs (when we go to hotels he reluctantly wears scrub pants in case he gets up first when room service arrives). And then there's the little matter of “ships passing in the night," i.e., when I leave the loo and DS is waiting in the hall outside. Yeah, he's 31 and used to rely on “the girls" for sustenance (at least for a short while), but it still creeps kids out to see their folks naked! (And it doesn't do my sense of propriety any favors).
Haven't had any Aquaphor stains, but I did sweat that brown washable marker on to the lining of my favorite bra. Dang. (Baby shampoo to the rescue). I do have a question--what the radiation therapist gave me were a few tubes of Aquaphor “Healing Ointment." I already have a large jar of Aquaphor “Original Formula" labeled for “extremely dry skin." Is it the same thing with just a name change? If so, I needn't replace the tubes when they run out, just scoop some out of the big jar into a little purse-size one for immediately after treatments.
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Oh Molly50....everytime I dip into Aquaphor I think of you... ; )) and my silent voice says Molly doesn't like greasy stuff..
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I have the healing ointment which is what my facility used. Maybe that's why I get stains and greasy while some of you don't.
11 of 33 down! X-rays today as well. I had a visit with my PS as well as PT today. Busy afternoon!
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What are the xrays and PT for?
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Happy first day, Suzanne. Octogirl! Happy to see you. Good to hear you get a break for Thanksgiving. Sophrosyne, Welcome!
Marijen, thanks for the giggle. You made my night.
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The x-rays I get every five days at my rads session. The PT is for my range of motion after my umx. I couldn't lift my arm up very high to the side. My shoulder and pecs are tight.
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Thanks everyone for the words of encouragement and the company! # 5 of 15 done today. Tomorrow I have an appointment with Genetic counselor and we will see if I will be getting testing. I have had no breast cancer - or cancer period in my family - but I've heard that being Triple Negative may make me a candidate - so we will see. I sure want to give my 24 year old daughter any information that may help her.
It's humbling staying at this Hope Lodge - American Cancer Society - I'm meeting people with all different cancers - as a matter of fact I haven't run into anyone with breast cancer . Many are much "sicker" than I am. I try to be grateful for these things when I find myself getting down. I've been going to the gym every day - the library - and today I found a beautiful yarn shop and decided to pick up some knitting needles again.
Best wishes to everyone on this road. xoxo
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Georgie: (perks up) Knitting? I'm an enthusiastic though somewhat disorganized knitter, and it did help me get through all the waiting around in doctors' offices and medical facilities. What's the name of the shop? Any idea what you'd make?
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ChiSandy, you made me laugh. DH sleeps nude and I used to try to embrace it, but when I was waking up at night to "Mommy, Mommy, I want you" from the other bedroom decided that clothed at night would be my modus operandi going forward. Now DS is 16 and coping reasonably well. But post-bmx, I think encountering me nude would scare him silly. Heck, it scares me silly.
Georgie, good job on the knitting! I wish that was a skill I'd picked up. Two grandmothers and my mother tried to teach me, but they are/were all right-handed, and I'm a leftie, so I never really got it. I know what you mean about being humbled. BC stinks, but I do occasionally run into people with other, truly dreadful versions of this bad beast, and it is a reminder of how fortunate we are in some ways.
I've scheduled 8 sessions with the lymphedema therapist during rads. So on Monday/Wednesday/Friday I'll come in on the subway for the rads and go home. It's about 1 and a quarter hours door to door. On Tuesday/Thursday I'll stick around and do LE in the early afternoon. Guess I'll be getting very familiar with the public library branch between the rads location and the LE location (a 10 minute walk). Will bring my laptop and just plan to work as much as possible in the downtime.
Queen, my actual start date is Nov. 16, not Oct. 28, and I'm scheduled for 25 sessions.
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Rainny: duly updated...sorry! As for knitting, now it does rather depend on whether you're even interested in learning (your choice!) but if you wanted to try again and had a right-handed teacher, face them rather than sitting side by side.
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Bluedog- how is your rash? I sure hope it's not shingles!
Ladies- haven't knitted in years but may be time to get out the needles. Great idea!
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Just an update on the Aloe gel from TJ's. It is magical. I'd say my pain level went down 90%after about 1 hour. It has a few other things (calendula, allantoin, & armica extract) in it to help with pain and soothe. If you can find it. I highly recommend it.
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Courtleboo, I am so glad you found something that works for you!
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It's funny everyone's mentioning knitting! A few weeks ago, my Mom came over to give a knitting lesson to my older daughter (I have two daughters, ages 11 and 7). I sat in on the lesson as well, because I was interested in learning. I only managed to get two rows done -- by the end of it, my hands were cramped and I was getting frustrated because some of the residual neuropathy numbness in my fingers was making it really hard to hold the knitting needles (I kept dropping them)! And my rows looked...pretty gnarly.
I may have to try again though -- I know it's like anything else, you just need practice, practice, and more practice!
Take care,
--Sherri, aka EnigmaticFox
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EnigmaticFox: if you are interested in continuing with the knitting, try a different yarn (weight, material), a different needle (larger/smaller diameter, metal/wood or even circular instead of two straight needles). That said, if you're not interested, don't worry about it! Life's too interesting to waste time on something you don't enjoy.
;
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I forgot to mention -- last Friday, my regular radiation appointment was pretty special!
The entire radiation oncology center that I go to does a big Halloween thing every year, where they agree on a theme and everyone dresses up to the theme. They have a few group photos of previous years, like the one where everyone was a character from The Wizard of Oz.
So when I came in, I got an idea of the theme right away. Poison Ivy, The Riddler, and Catwoman were all hanging out at the front desk!
I asked them if the theme this year was super villains, but they said, "No...we have the super heroes trapped in the back".
One of the nurses was dressed up as Super Nurse!
And the treatment room had been decked out as the Hall of Justice! Here's me with all my super hero radiation techs!
I was trying to strike a pose, not realizing that wearing a johnny makes that rather difficult to pull off well. Oh well.
I told the techs about the "holding the heroes captive" remark, and one immediately quipped, "I'm not worried -- we've got a linear accelerator on our side!"
...is it weird to say that I really enjoy seeing these guys every day? Granted, I wish it were in better circumstances, but they do make a hard thing a lot easier...
Did any of you dress up for Halloween this year? I didn't get a picture of my costume, but I dressed up as Wendy Corduroy from the cartoon Gravity Falls (with a long red wig and lumberjack shirt and cap).
Take care,
--Sherri, aka EnigmaticFox
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Sherri, those are great photos! And it leads to an odd question that has flitted through my mind...
Since May, I've gone through chemo (directed by MO), surgery (BS, obviously), and now starting rads (RO). Nearly everyone I've met, on all the services, has been tremendous: helpful and generally wonderful. But the rads people in particular all have a sense of humor, which they're not afraid to show. Is that true across the board? Or just the quirks of my particular caregivers/services?
Like I said, odd question.
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What fun! I'm sure their attitude goes a long way toward making your radiation less emotionally difficult.
I've posted this elsewhere, but here was mine:
On another thread, somebody (slothabouttown?) said oops, too much time in the linear accelerator.
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Ksusan, it was me!
Sherri, great pics. How wonderful that your rads gang is so fun-loving. Alas, mine is not. Perfectly competent but no whimsy at all.
In fact, rainnyc, you and others have written about feeling very connected to your rads techs. I don't feel that way at all, as I've barely seen the same one twice. There are 3 machines at my place, and they rotate the techs among them every few days to keep up their skills. I felt much closer to my chemo nurses.
HappyHammer, my rash is somewhat better, thanks. I'm able to manage the itch with cortisone cream and oral Benadryl. Hopefully I'll get to see the doc today (was supposed to see her Tuesday but she "wasn't in") and can ask hér about it.0
