Hello,

Hello , My Dad's radiation treatment started last week. It was 4 days. Today , I am here meeting with him. I find his face is swollen. He also started with Chemo Carbo weekly dose last week.
Can radiation cause any swelling of face? or it could be chemo which is causing it. Also, the mask which is used for radiation is very tight. I will talk to the team tomorrow ,to find out if they can change the mask, so it can fit nicely.

The mask is supposed to be tight so that you can not move your head. It is very uncomfortable. I am sure someone cane answer your question about the swelling face. I never had that problem, but that may be the only problem I did not have.

sujubee,

Yes, radiation absolutely causes swelling. I'm surprised that it happened so quickly to your Dad, but my docs have told me the swelling in my left cheek is most likely permanent.

Sadly, the mask has to be tight to prevent even the slightest movement. The radiation has all been mapped out to pinpoint the correct areas and avoid damaging other tissue. In other words, generally, tight is fitting nicely.

- Margaret

Re the mask. It's tight now but chances are he will loose weight during Tx and his mask won't fit tight at that point. When I first started after each rad session it looked like I had been hit in the face with a tennis racket but the lines went away within 30 mins or so. I'm almost positive they won't redo the mask.

My mask would some days be tight and other days not so tight. I think with all the fluids I was forcing plus warm weather, I was retaining some fluid. I was told by the techs not to get a haircut while I was in treatment. My hair was very long and thick when I started treatment. They said if I cut my hair, my mask would be too loose. It is important that you can not move around while be treated. I would have lines some days but they would disappear in a couple of hours.

Subujee, everyone is correct. The mask needs to form fit the face to keep it in place. In my case they actually did redo it for me after a few days. Can't remember why but the second mask seemed to do the trick. But even then it was pressing down so hard on my - let me be generous to myself and say magnificent instead of merely prominent - nose that the tech cut a circle out of the mesh to allow that glorious ship's prow to cut through the waves of air as it was meant to. Which helped a lot and apparently made no difference to the positioning of my head.

If your father is having a problem in this department you might ask about a snip job! (er, of the mask, not his nose)

D2

When I finished all of my radiation treatments, they asked me if I wanted to keep the mask. I guess I could have taken it home and hung it on the wall, but at the time, I never wanted to see it again! Actually, I thought that the "fudgesickle" (that's what I thought that it looked like) that I had to bite down on was worse than the mask. I understood the reason for it (to protect the roof of my mouth from the radiation)but I sure didn't like it!

The face shrinks along with the rest of the body. Even my glasses are loose.