Larry, as others have mentioned, neck burns is definitely common especiallly when the radiation dose is heavy. When I was in about 4 to 5 weeks of treatment, nothing changed to my skin and I thought I could be that lucky to escape any burn. Then I was totally wrong, it happened all so suddenly that my skin got bruised and became sun-burned to the stage that when others looked at me, they looked scared. There was occasional bleeding around the neck and the most unbearable moment was when the nurse had to bolt the mask around my neck before treatment. It hurt so much that I once begged my doctor to stop my treatment. He didn't support any delay and the last few treatments were a real torture. As I was at that time hospitalized, I had nurses take care of the wound and they washed it and applied dressing on it daily until I was discharged. They didn't put on any cream and just placed a clean 'cloth' on top to cover up the wound. As I was on regular pain killer at that time, I didn't feel much pain. The skin burn took about 3 weeks to heal but now, there are still 'scars' on my left shoulder and anyone can tell easily that the skin was once burnt. Other than that, it didn't cause any pain after it healed and I won't regard this a serious side effect of radiation.

Karen