23/32 rads breasts raw underneath help!

What Ruth said  

forgot to add that I worked too but have a desk job.  It was painful to move my right arm to type but managed to make it.   I never stopped wearing my bra, DD's without a bra is not acceptable in the corporate world!  I used a cut up soft tshirt too under my bra.  Ibuprofen was helpful too.

Well...it sounds like you have been through quite an ordeal.  I have twelve treatments left.  I am not having as bad a time as you, but experiencing a lot of itching and those sharp pains as well.  I have only missed two days of work throughout the treatment.  Today I just had to stay home.  Yesterday, I forced myself to work and stay till the end, but was miserable.  The underside of my breast is the worst and under the arm, red and blotchy.  I can't stand the itching and don't know why it is itching so badly.  I have a steriod prescription cream the doctor gave me and going to talk to them again tomorrow about the discomfort.  I am so tired of all this....April 1 I am done, thank goodness!!!

What they gave me is triamcinolone acetonide cream...is what you are suggesting different than this??

Congratulations lovewins...You graduated  ♥ ♥   

I had 5 weeks of radiation before I started to burn, and then the burning started and got worse and worse over the next 5 days. I had been using Calendula cream after every session. I also took a spray bottle filled with water to every session and sprayed it on the radiated area to cool it down as immediately as possible. Long story short, I made the mistake of downplaying the slight chafing in my armpit midway through the 5th week.

On Friday Jan 3, 2014, I had a radiation session that completed 5 out of 6 weeks. Over the following two days, the weekend of Jan 4 & 5, the burning began. My right armpit was so badly burned -- not blistered but sort of a dark reddish grayish purplish color -- that on Sunday the 5th I sent my radiation oncologist a picture of it and expressed my doubt about radiation on that Monday. Her nurse asked me to come in anyway, so that they could advise me on next steps. That day she confirmed that there would be an interruption in the schedule and that we would plan to start again on Monday the 13th. She handed me some Vaseline (PETROLEUM jelly - UGH!) soaked gauze patches and a couple of tube tops. She said to get some Silvadene cream and apply it 2-3 times a day. Then put the vaseline-soaked gauze on at night and the tube top over it. Wash the vaseline off each morning so that it would not prevent the Silvadene from penetrating the skin. All of this was seemingly good advice, but it simply didn't work. The burn got worse on Monday, even worse on Tuesday, and by Wednesday it peaked. And, try to imagine removing gobs of vaseline from a large burn. Rub soap on it? Scrub it with a cloth? Run hot water on it? You choose the method of torture. I quickly abandoned that course and began to chart my own.

A reasonably thorough (although pain-wracked) search on the internet on Tuesday convinced me that no one had published how they cracked the code on this problem and that, tragically, some people live in agony with it for weeks. What I needed to do first was to figure out how to stop the intermittent, searing pain that I felt in my armpit (does anything hurt worse than a burn?). I finally took a flashlight and lit up my armpit, moving my arm in every direction. I realized that the un-slathered skin on my arm was dry enough that it was sticking to the burned skin and pulling some of it off every time I moved my arm. So I slathered my under arm with Calendula Cream but I also needed a way to keep from automatically lowering my arm. I took a tennis ball and put it inside the tube top, about 5-6 inches below my armpit. I kept it there night and day for two days. I also took a homeopathic remedy called Boiron's Cantharis 30 (vitamin stores carry it) to start the healing from the inside. By Thursday morning I had stopped wincing and hissing with pain (you know, the involuntary intake of breath) and when I saw my naturopath that day, he recommended a light coating of a mixture of Manuca honey and Alba's Un-Petroleum Jelly (a non-petroleum jelly). I bought both at Whole Foods. All in all, I regained my sanity over the next 3 days and after a total of two weeks off, completed my last week of radiation without further burning.

I hope this helps someone!!