Greetings all, and thank you for sharing your experiences on this board.

For those of you who are going through radiation, I can pass along a few tips that helped me with the unpleasant side effects:

1. Club Soda (Use as a mouth rinse) - Great for cutting through and getting rid of the thick mucous you get from Radiation

2. Ice Packs - Use on radiated area daily to help reduce swelling, redness that your skin will eventually have. (Aloe is a big must as well!)

3. Get a routine for eating and mouthcare. This helped me as toward the end, when I had no desire to do anything but sleep. Keeping my mouth clean went a long way to keeping the side-effects away.

Best of luck to each of you and your continued journey and fight of this disease.

Thanks for these suggestions, I am going to give them to John today after he gets home from RT. I was realy interested in the aloe . We had read in a RT handbook not to use any ointments or lotions on face. I have this hugh pot of aloe growing in my kitchen window.Are you using fresh aloe, or somekind if lotion? Amy

Amy,
You don't dare put anything on the treatment area BEFORE radiation. There is a cream call BIAFINE that is very good for radiation burns. Ones uses it the entire time and it is supposed to help prevent the buen. I didn't get it until after I was fried. Ask dr about it. You will need a script. Before I had that I used a cream called Aloe Relief which I found better than the Aquaphor.

Take care,
Eileen

We were told that we could put something on the burns but we had to wash it off before each rad tx. Because the skin was so raw we opted to wait until the txs were finished. It was explained to us that the lotions and creams can interfere and distort the rad beams.

After tx was over we were given some silverdene cream that is usually prescribed for burn patients. We used something called domboro for cleaning. This is over the counter and it smelled like vinegar which Harry hated. But he lived through it and it wasn't long after the tx that he healed quite well. He still has a tiny remnence of burned skin on his chest just below his collar but I am sure that will go away in time.

I was amazed at how far the burns were..... from his jaw line around to the back of his neck.... down to about a quarter of the way down his chest and halfway down his back. The only spot that wasn't burned was the spot at the base of his throat between the colar bones where they had a piece of tape over his blue cross.

When I finally took off the tape it was a little funny looking because here was all of this black burned skin and this white square right in the middle.

The burns heal but the best thing to make sure of is to keep the area clean. Especially if, like Harry had, you have open sores from the burns.

Best of luck to you.

Cindy

FYI- In my case (which was 2 different radiologists) the first recommended the aloe (natural gel, colorless) 2x day. (Morning and after treatment). The second doctor had no restrictions at all, but aloe was all I used.

Thanks, yall.Am making a list of things to ask about at the next Dr. appt. Amy

Dad's RO sez 100% Aloe (NO alcohol) is the best and use it anytime, even right before his daily IMRT treatments...guess each doc is different. It seems to help Dad. The brand name is Fruit of the Earth...you have to read labels to find 100% unless of course you grow your own!

Well, John's neck is red and burning, also developing small scabs( treatment #18 finished today] Rad nurse sent him home with Aquaphor which I put on his skin tonite. I am thinking about alternating this with aloe-growing in my window-. I am keeping all your suggestions above in my arsenal. Boy, alot of this is trial and error! Thanks, Amy

Did you try using the ice packs? That really seemed to help get the swelling down for me. My wife got a couple small ones from the Dollar Store and I'd alternate them. (About an hour or so a night)

Even though its more like a chemical burn, It really helped keep my skin healthy. The nurses at my treatment were suprised how well my skin held up.

Cindy,
actually the advice they told you isn't totally accurate. Creams can act as a "bolus" effect and cause the radiation to be intensified on the skin, causing far worse burns and skin damage. Everyone will react differently to the radiation anyway. Some, like myself, were fortunate enough to have a minor "sunburn effect" and others, like Harry, have really severe side effects. People with fair skin tend to fare worse during radiation.

My RO is the one who teaches all of the other RO's about IMRT, she is a clinical professor of IMRT specifically, at a top comprehensive cancer center, she says no creams, lotions or ointments while actually receiving the radiation treatment. Afterwards is fine but go in there with dry skin. They gave me some stuff specifically for radiation called Radiacare - which was mainly Aloe Vera anyway. Ice packs are standard burn care first aid, but if the skin is really raw, i.e., not intact and open to infection, insure that the icepacks are aseptically handled to minimize infections. And like Bellarte said, find pure aloe without alcohol in it. As far as using natural aloe (like from a plant), I woudn't do it if the skin is not intact.

The skin can also get very itchy towards the end of treatment so don't scratch it. They prescribed for me a steroidal cream for a short period of time that helped with that phase.

Bdean, your advice is right on the money. I might ad to that about using braided dental floss, which is far gentler on the gums, and also a baby's tooth brush for the dental care part of it. Mine had teddy bears on it (lol).

The good news is that the skin is the very first thing to heal post radiation.