After radiation

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Nancy2581
Nancy2581 Member Posts: 1,234
edited June 2016 in Radiation Therapy - Before, During, and After

Just curious does anyone feel like the side they had radiated isn't the same anymore? For the most part I am fine, but certain movements I can feel some pain/tightness. I am 2 years out from a lumpectomy and about 16 months post radiation. I asked my onc if the radiation side is more sensitive now and she did say yes, but she was referring to the bones. I've always felt some tightness after surgery and then early May I went to bed fine and woke up and had pain whenever I coughed, sneezed, cleared my throat, or took a deep breath it hurt. It's a lot better now, but I can still feel it when I cough or sneeze. I can't remember hurting myself although I did lift a 40lb water bottle, but nothing happened until the next morning. I had X-rays taken 2 weeks after it happened. They were fine. When I saw my onc a few weeks ago and mentioned it to her she offered a CT scan, but I felt it's gotten better not worse, but just won't go away. I guess my question is my surgery/radiation side has never gone back to normal so are we more prone to aches and pains?

Thanks,

Nancy

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  • ChiSandy
    ChiSandy Member Posts: 12,133
    edited June 2016

    Are you sure you didn’t have costochondritis (inflammation of your ribs & connective tissue)? It can come on suddenly, is most often viral, hurts like hell, and often disappears as mysteriously as it came on. I actually went to the ER with it once, and they had me take Aleve. I was fine the next day. And as to injury to soft tissue, the pain can take 24 hrs. to show up.

    7 months post-rads, my breasts look nearly identical to the way they were before bc--the R is once again the slightly smaller one (noticed my bra cup wrinkling right where the lx was) and the only way one can tell I even had lx is to look for the scar in a slightly tanned area on the side. But it’s still totally numb in the irradiated area (I had partial-breast rads to just the tumor bed and a small surrounding margin). There’s a large seroma inside, though it’s much smaller than when the radiation enlarged it and caused my breast to have a large swollen “bump” on the side, and the fibrosis over it has softened considerably.

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  • Nancy2581
    Nancy2581 Member Posts: 1,234
    edited June 2016

    Hmmmm I'd never heard of costochondritis. Will have to look that one up. I did go to the doctor 2 weeks after it happened because it still hurt something horribly. He gave me something (forget the name) and it did help after a day or two. The thing is that pain is still there with certain movements, sneezing or coughing. It is much much better than before just not gone.

    My breasts "look" just fine, but it's the weird, oddness that I feel that pops up.

    Thanks

    Nanccy

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