Radiotherapy a rough guide

At time of writing this I am just reaching the half way point of radiotherapy for breast cancer.  Here's some of my observances and a list of creams which are allowable during this procedure.  

They say that radiotherapy makes you very tired, I'm not being able to distinguish between the affects of the radiotherapy or simply just being tired from two and a half hours of driving to the hospital every day which is over an hour away. Unfortunately my normal hospital does not have these 2 million pound machines so like everyone else who attends that hospital, we all have a long drive every weekday for five weeks. Roughly speaking the average treatment regime is over 20 treatments on these enormous space age looking machines and ironically the actual application of radiation only takes a few seconds. 

 To receive the treatment you have to lay on a thin narrow hard bed thing which slides and the radiotherapy machine revolves around you.  It's like being on the star ship enterprise.  So in order to target the exact spot where you need blasting (I exaggerate because you can't feel anything at the time) they will line you up and mark your body with dots on your first planning meeting and take a record of the measurements. Then on every visit you will need to line up these dots which sometimes takes longer than others, it's totally random how well you line up when you lie down, with your head on a round puffy donut and your legs over a pyramid shaped thing. You have to relax enough for the operators to pull you about a bit to line up the marks, for breast cancer you are on your back with your arms in rests above your head. It's important that if you have an operation on your breasts and lymph nodes, that you are do your exercises so that you have enough mobility in your arms to get in the required position without too much discomfort. 

Over the course of your twenty or so treatments, you are likely to get red, pink, hot and swollen in the area being treated. You also get these twinges like electric shocks during the day, little needle jabbing sensations. For me it's in the breast, so I can't speak for anyone else as it's different for other types of cancer.

My hospital fell short of giving me any printed information about recommended creams but it's vital that you don't use anything containing metal or perfume during this time. Well I have to tell you that until very recently I didn't even realise that deodorant and creams contained metal, what the fuck. So when I was lucky enough to try the deodorant from Earth Conscious UK I realised that most big brands contain aluminium, something which is thought to cause cancer, and seeing as how my lymph nodes had cancer in them under my armpit, I decided to avoid anything with this in future. However, trying to understand the ingredients on the back of the plastic containers isn't always as clear as you'd like it to be.

So, my hospital told me not to use anything containing metal or perfume and for the first week of treatment I washed using the anti-bacterial wash given to me before my operation, WRONG !!! Oh yeah, thanks for that, apparently, because it's anti-bacterial it will contain metal. If my hospital had given out a printed leaflet like the one my friend received at Barts in London, I would have had a much better idea on the do's and dont's, so here's why I'm typing this blog, so if you like me are let down on the information front, you can do a check here for creams that are allowed.

Radiotherapy treatment can dry out your skin to the point that it cracks open, so you need to smother up with creams several times during the day. I ordered up quite a few different ones, which is handy because some are very thick, some thin and some soothing, so I tend to vary it during the day.

When you visit the hospital it will probably make everyone's life easier if you don't wear a bra. I feel too swollen to wear one and I don't want anything that rubs so I've been wearing a cotton t-shirt with a baggy top over that and this way I don't need to bother with changing in the changing room and wearing the gown of shame (with your arse hanging out), I just whip my top off in the treatment room and I'm raring to go with no faffing. 

It may be interesting for you to know that my red burning soreness was much reduced on the days I was taking ibuprofen for something else, I have no idea if this is related or not. 

I'm having quite a bad severe reaction to the Herceptin injections, and now realise that a lot of what was causing me discomfort during chemotherapy was down to the Herceptin drug, which I had been led to believe had no side effects. Huh, seriously. If you read the list of side effects that are rare, well I've got every single one of them in abundance. Worst of all a terrible pain in my 'siting bone' making sitting absolutely agony. I'm now trying to reduce this with ibuprofen during the day so that I can at least do something other than lie on my side in bed. The Herceptin is supposed to be a course of one year treatments but there's no way I can do another year in this state, so we are going to see if I can struggle to the half way mark. It really should be noted please that even when they can no longer detect cancer cells in your biopsies the treatments for micro cells continues for quite some time after, if not for life.

So for anyone about to start here's a list of the creams that are allowed during radiotherapy, given to my friend by her hospital, I can add to this list by including 'Moo Goo', which I received in a charity care box organised by Art For Cure.  I'm not sure where you can buy Moo Goo cream so I suggest you google it for online delivery. 

These creams however should be available from Boots or Superdrug in the UK;
Dr. Organic Aloe Vera Gel (it tends to make your clothes stick to you so I'd recommend using it when you can leave it to dry in the open), Boots Derma Care Daily Moisturiser, Aveeno Daily Moisturising Lotion, Simple Hydrating Light Moisturiser, Oilatum Cream, E45 Cream for dry skin and Eczema, Cetraben Cream, Weleda Baby Calendula Body Lotion. 

I would also recommend the Earth Conscious deodorant for the future but personally I wouldn't wear any deodorant while having treatment in case it causes a skin reaction. Also the packaging for Earth Conscious is not plastic, which I wish was the case for all these others. 

Hope this helps, I would suggest getting a few of these creams, you tend to use quite a lot, and if you want to buy someone a present then try and track down that Moo Goo Natural Skin Milk 'udder cream', I think you can find it on Amazon and it feels the nicest of all the ones I've so far tried. 

Roll on Christmas when I no longer have to go to hospital every day.