Pain in upper arms

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MaryNY
MaryNY Member Posts: 1,584
edited June 2014 in Radiation Therapy - Before, During, and After

I'm having radiation in the prone (face down) position. I had treatment #10 (out of 33) today. For the last week and a half, I've been feeling pain/soreness in my upper arms. It gets bad at night and seems to fade during the day. I don't think the radiation itself can be the cause as I have it in both arms but only left breast is being radiated. It seems like a muscular pain as it hurst mostly when I move my arms.

Could this be a delayed reaction to chemotherapy or Neulasta? It's like the soreness I would get from Neulasta but my last Neulasta shot was in mid-January. 

I have to hold my hands above my head during the treatment. This is just for 10-15 minutes but was much longer during the planning session. Would that be likely to cause this pain? Just wondering if anyone else had a similar experience?

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  • c2will
    c2will Member Posts: 91
    edited March 2010

    I have my treatment in the same position.  I noticed a little discomfort in my shoulder blades today, which I am attributing to the arm position.  Sometimes it seems that I have to stretch a little farther to hold on the posts on the table. 

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  • MaryNY
    MaryNY Member Posts: 1,584
    edited March 2010

    Hi Carol: You have posts to hold onto? They made me a kind of cast when I went for planning. They pulled what looked like a piece of fabric out of a warm bath and placed on the head end of the table. I think it was placed over a piece of thick foam. Then they had me lie on this until it set. This created a slight indent for my head and two indents for my arms. The cast set so it's now like a piece of plastic. It was labelled with my name and they pull that out for me everytime I go. Because of this my arms and head lie in pretty much the same position each time. When I finish I usually just notice soreness in my neck from having my head twisted to one side. I probably should be doing neck, shoulder and arm exercises to ease the soreness.

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  • Leah_S
    Leah_S Member Posts: 8,458
    edited March 2010

    Sounds like a positioning problem to me, so the exercise would be a good idea.

    Best ofd luck.

    Leah

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  • NatureGrrl
    NatureGrrl Member Posts: 1,367
    edited March 2010

    It's probably just the position you have to hold during rads, but it doesn't hurt to let your rad. oncologist and/or techs know about it.  I had a bit of shoulder pain in one arm (only had to raise that arm) and I noticed I tensed up a little as part of holding absolutely still -- so I learned to remind myself to relax as much as possible.  That helped.  Some mild stretching/exercise might help, too.  Hang in there!

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  • MaryNY
    MaryNY Member Posts: 1,584
    edited March 2010

    Thanks all. Radiation techs said they never heard of anyone having this problem before. I also checked with the nurse last week during my weekly visit and she said she'd never heard of it either. However, yesterday's nurse said she had heard people complain of arm pain before. At least since I have it on both sides to the same degree, I can discount it being the result of lymphodema.

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