My Radiotherapy Treatment

I must admit that I didn’t know much about radiotherapy before I actually started the treatment. Everyone says that chemo is the worst, and I have to agree with them. So radiotherapy was a voyage of discovery, and I thought I’d share my experience so that if anyone else has to go through it then they will be better informed than I was. This might be useful for any friends and family too, for them to support whoever is going through it.

My radiotherapy took place at the Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth, which is around 40 minutes from home, on a good day with no traffic. In rush hour it takes a lot longer, and is around an hour from my workplace, which is a bit of a pain in the arse when you have to go every single day.

Radiotherapy Preparation

I have to say that the team at Portsmouth prepared me very well. I met my consultant first who explained very clearly what would happen and gave me the consent forms to sign. I then had a preparation appointment with the radiotherapy team, who talked me through exactly what would happen and then lay me under a scanner to get lots of measurements so that the treatment would pinpoint the exact spots it was supposed to. Modern radiotherapy machines are designed to do least damage to the rest of your body, including vital nearby organs. In my case these included my heart which is very close to the chest wall and armpit area which needed the treatment.

As well as measuring me the radiologist also tattooed me. The tattoos are tiny dots, around 1mm in diameter, which some people say look like freckles, but I thought they looked more like blackheads! There was one under each armpit and another right in the centre of my chest. It bloody hurt, them stabbing my armpits and inking it, a very crude method of tattoing like some of my old schoolmates used to do with a compass and pen!

I was given a special top, a short gown which I would keep with me and bring to every appointment. It had velcro on the shoulder seams so it could be opened up easily during the treatment so the radiographers had full access to my chest, the area being treated.

I was also given a list of my appointments. It would be every weekday for 15 days, but I didn’t have to go on bank holidays which was handy as my treatment spanned Easter and the May Day weekend. I’d asked for them to be in the afternoon, to allow me to work until 2pm and then head over to Portsmouth each day. In total it was nearly four weeks of trekking over there, which seemed like a real slog.

Radiotherapy Day!

My first appointment was on April 15th, and when I reported to the main reception I was greeted by the board with the wait times. I was delighted to be on machine number 3 as it was ‘on time’. I subsequently found out that this was a lie, or someone hadn’t updated the board, as I was waiting for an hour before I was called into the inner waiting room where I got changed into my gown.

You’re supposed to be braless but there’s no way I was sitting in a waiting room with no bra on so I kept mine on. Go me! Such a rebel!

It was then another half an hour before I started the treatment, which wasn’t unusual, as it turned out. On the odd day I breezed in and out really quickly, but this was the exception rather than the rule. On most days I spent a couple of hours at the hospital, and then had another couple of hours travel time on top.

When you get called into the radiotherapy room, two radiographers lay you on the table, undo the velcro and shuffle you about until you’re in the right place. They use physical rulers, as well as lasers and lights which shine on your chest with a scale, to see whether you’re all lined up properly.

The point of all the measurements they took at the planning session was so that I would be perfectly positioned every time I was treated. As you can see from the screen below, there are many different numbers which they use, including the distance my chin needed to be from my chest (9.5cm!) as well as making sure I was at the right angle of rotation on the bed.

When I lay on the bed I had to put my arms in stirrups above my head, which you can just see in the photo below (they’re brown). My head lay on the red section and my knees went over the blue tent-shaped foam on the bottom right of the photo. It was like being on a torture rack!

Then the radiotherapy team leave the room and you’re on your own for around 15 minutes, sometimes longer if they’re doing a scan, while the machine does its thing. It moves around your body and makes buzzing noises, while you try and ignore the urge to scratch an itch, which always happened to me as soon as I was on my own. My nose or shoulder would suddenly itch and there was nothing I could do about it!

The rooms in Portsmouth did at least have the radio on, so I could listen to music and hum along with the songs. If I needed to then I could have shouted or waved at the radiographers as they were using CCTV to watch me, but I was a good patient and stayed still the whole time.

The picture below shows my view of the radiotherapy machine, which I would stare at for 20 minutes or so each time.

Radiotherapy side effects

The main radiotherapy side effects are burns and tiredness. I did get burns, which were similar to sunburn and didn’t really start until the treatment finished. They got worse for a couple of weeks and have now healed completely, one month on. As far as tiredness goes, I’m exhausted all of the time anyway, so it’s difficult to tell how much of that is a result of the radiotherapy. Tiredness is a normal part of life for me now, and is a side effect of every treatment I’ve had over the past year. It’s annoying, but is a small price to pay for having come out the other side with my life intact.

For me, radiotherapy was fairly straightforward, but I know that it’s not like that for others. If your cancer is in a different part of the body then it can be a much tougher phase of your treatment, or you may need more than the 15 treatments I had, which prolongs it massively.

It seems like such a slog when you’re going through it, but when you come out the other side it seems like it went in the blink of an eye! Although I’m still having hormonal and targeted treatments, I feel like I’m over the worst and can start getting back to normal and planning my life again. I still have medical appointments most weeks but am back to a normal working week, seeing friends and attending scooter rallies again. I’ve even had my hair bleached again! This was against medical advice to wait longer, but my I came through chemo with my scalp intact so took a chance that it would be OK, and it was!

HAVE YOU GOT LIFE OR CRITICAL ILLNESS INSURANCE?
If the answer is no, then maybe it’s time to sort it out. Unfortunately I didn’t have critical illness cover which would have given me a handy payout and taken the pressure off, financially. I do have good life insurance cover though as I think it’s vital to protect my family if the worst were to happen. You can always speak to the really helpful people at LifeSearch, the UK’s biggest life and protection insurance broker, and loved by Martin ‘MoneySavingExpert’ Lewis. Use this link to get in touch with them and they’ll help guide you through the process – and will also know that you’re from the Diary Of A Detour website.

Read More

Read more about my cancer journey :
– My cancer diagnosis
– My first breast cancer surgery
– What happens at a chemo session?
– My chemo half time analysis
– My chemo side effects
– Making a breast cast
– My mastectomy
– My radiotherapy treatment
– 10 Ways to help someone with cancer
– Am I in remission?
– What is Scar Work?
– My breast reconstruction surgery
– Find travel insurance after cancer