I lost beard and hair on the back of my neck. After 5 months it has all returned. This was a gret relief to me since I have had a beard for the last 40 years.

Haven't noticed hubby's hair being gone but he has the thickest hair ever. He did have a magnificent handlebar moustache and pretty much lost one side of it, just wears it shorter now.

Margaret

Hi Joel,

I had similar hair loss and radiation burns.

It was explained to me as follows:

As you know, the machine moves so that it shoots the radiation from the front, sides and back of your body - and the radiation doesn't just stop within the body, it travels into the front then out the back, into one side and out the other, into the back then out the front. Hence a lot of radiation damage to various parts around the head.

Also, the targetting is not standard, since the location of everyone's tumors is different. The RO mapped out the radiation field based on the location of my tumors, as well as covering the opposite side of my lower jaw and neck (where I did not have any tumors) as a precautionary measure. The dosing was also different on both sides (the tumor side got about 4 more doses).

Best wishes,

Chris

I had IMRT ending first of June. My beard hair has pretty much all come back, save for the area around my radical neck dissection scars. Alas, the hair on the back of my neck and behind the ears is still missing. My dermatologist said that this hair tends to grow back within 3 or 4 months if it's coming back at all, depending on radiation dose. I'm past the 4 month mark.... but I still hope!

D2

It did take about 4 months for my hair to come back. The worst skin effect I had was when I went out to my garden one day for a couple of hours. I felt good that day and wanted to do something. It was cloudy, but I still got an awful sun burn. The skin on my neck dried, cracked scabbed and everything else you can imagine. For the rest of my treatment I wore a hood I made out of an old t-shirt covering everything but my eyes whenever I went out.