People's responses vary from little skin reaction to severe burns and sloughing off of necrotic and dying tissues as in Uptowns case and my own. These external manifestations are treated as any severe burn, and because of the open wounds like fire burn victims people have to be on the look out for infections. Aquaphor coated my neck for months after radiation and I would have to say that the worst time was the first month after the end of treatment. The differences in response and severity are directly related to the volume and duration of exposure. No two cancer patients have exactly the same amount, hence the wide variety of comments about what they experienced.