I had radiation all of July 2020.

In fact, so did my grandma.

My grandmother was diagnosed with throat cancer just two days after my news of being NED (No Evidence of Disease— which was just one week post double-mastectomy & lymph node removal surgery).

Talk about an emotional rollercoaster.

I remember calling her and Opa with the good news— it had been a Wednesday afternoon in May. A beautiful sunny day. I knew she had recently been in for a biopsy and would get the results soon. She was nervous, I’m sure, but still so ecstatic for me.

But alas, her news came just two short days after. We had all been hopeful it would be a benign mass…

Honestly, what was with 2020!?

A photo from my final radiation session!

I went from being in a state of disbelief and ‘what now’ sprinkled with pure gratefulness, to feeling guilty, upset, and confused about how to feel altogether…

We learned that we would be doing radiation more or less at the exact same time. In fact, we finished just one day apart (it should’ve been same day but I had a delay due to a broken down machine). What are the odds of this happening?! Seriously…

Unfortunately, she is in Toronto, and I am just outside of Vancouver, so I wasn’t physically able to be there to support her.

This is my grandma with her special head gear for throat radiation. Of course I didn’t have any apparatus on my body, just little markers. I just lied there with my arms above my head and held my breath at specific intervals when prompted!

The order of my treatment went:

Chemotherapy (November 2019-March 2020)
Double mastectomy + axillary surgery (April 2020)
Radiation (July 2020)
(Plus continued Herceptin February 2020-December 2020 + 10 years of Tamoxifen)

I had a consult with a radiation oncologist first to discuss my case and their suggested process.

It was recommended for me to do 25 rounds (over the span of 5 weeks) Monday-Friday.

She went over my chances of recurrence with and without radiation.

She discussed some of the side effects and possibilities.

And then I was scheduled for the set up.

The initial set up is an appointment in which you go in for a few permanent tattoo marks on your skin. I have 4 total around my left breast. They look like odd little freckles.

During this session they also lay you in the machine and get you to do some breathing tests. Because of the location my cancer had been in, holding my breath would expand my chest cavity to help avoid damage to my heart (which was totally necessary since Herceptin already does a good job at that!)

Luckily I could hold my breath just fine. In fact, I certainly over thunk it at the time and mentally psyched myself out a few times. The ladies doing my set up were very patient and kind though, so that helped. They speak to you through a speaker on the ceiling from a booth outside the room. The preciseness of the set up for radiation treatment is insane. You need to be lined up the exact same way every single session (this is what makes it take longer than the 5 total minutes of actual breath-holding and treatment itself), which is why they mark your body with the permanent tattoos, use little lights to line up a scale on your skin, and move the machine around you millimetre by millimetre in order to get it just right.

I believe I started treatment one week after this set up session.

I am just a torso of scars and burns here. PS: Friendly reminder to not look if my nipple-less foobs make you uncomfortable.

Radiation treatment was like going to a job— you travel back and forth to the hospital Monday-Friday for 5 weeks straight (some people need longer, some shorter, of course. Grandma needed seven weeks total).

Because of Covid I just went in alone each time. I drove myself there and back and it was incredibly upsetting to be, yet again, the youngest person in there by at least two decades. It was a quiet place to be. Everyone waiting around, spaced out in their masks, waiting in ugly hospital gowns for their turn. However, some days I met some entertaining and interesting people to talk to so it wasn’t all bad! And I must say, all of the staff are about my age, and we all got along really well. We talked about their weddings and camping and they were great at making me feel comfortable. I felt I was treated just like a friend, or someone going in for a beauty service, honestly.

I was never there for more than an hour (usually in and out within 30-40 minutes all said and done unless the machine broke down or something, which unfortunately happened a surprising amount…) My hospital only had 2/4 machines working during the summer so it caused a lot of rescheduling and delays for me each and every day, which was annoying, but what can you do? Luckily I live super close to my hospital too, so really it didn’t waste too much of my day either. I know for some it can be a half-day adventure depending where you have to drive in from. So really, I couldn’t complain.

Calendula Cream for Radiation — Highly recommend this cream for radiation treatment. I used a mixture of creams but this one was lovely and easy to get off Amazon!

I managed to work full hours most days, and some I just took a half day off, depending on when my appointment was. It was never consistent. 8:00am one day, 7:45pm the next… I would’ve appreciated a schedule, but I guess people are always coming and going and they do the best they can with broken machines and rearranging when people can’t make it for treatment.

I was in a brand new relationship and trying to ‘live life’ to the fullest while going back and forth to the hospital every day. (On top on also going for Herceptin and other check-ups and scans and whatnot).

Radiation can cause a lot of fatigue, but because of my determination to ‘yolo’, I think I pushed by just fine. I went to the beach, went camping, spent time outside with my new boyfriend’s family in their gorgeous backyard…

Some days were definitely harder than others though. Definitely take it easy during the weeks of radiation— I know it’s often deemed as the ‘easy’ part of treatment, but not always. I think that’s unfair for anyone to say, especially depending upon where your radiation is… not to mention, if it’s after surgery, just the mental weight of everything you have already been through can be more than enough to hold.

After each session I would go home and make a cool salt water soak for my burn area. Which is where you bring salt water to a boil, let it cool to room temperature, and then take a cloth to soak some up, wring it out, and lay it on your chest until it no longer felt cool on your skin. I also used lotion religiously.

Here are a handful that I used:

I bought everything online except for GlaxalBase (get it at your local pharmacy). And the Flamazine is a prescription).

The burns started off hardly noticeable at all. I would say it wasn’t until about week 3 that I noticed any redness, irritation, or discolouration so I was hopeful I’d finish ‘strong’.

In the end, I had one or two tiny open blisters (they didn’t hurt me though) and to be safe (to avoid infection), I was prescribed by my radiologist oncologist, Flamazine cream. I only used it for one week and then started to heal up just fine.

Yes, I looked incredibly red, but I wasn’t that sore. My collar bone felt the roughest, and the little blister looked the nastiest, but overall I would say my experience had been okay.

Since it was the summer time and I wanted to still get out and enjoy the sunshine (really looking forward to that again now that we’re in rainy BC Winter haha), I ensured to cover up with a light shawl or T-Shirt and bandana, wore a hat, etc.

Protected from the sun but still living life!

I would say that within one month my body had healed as best as possible.

I would say that I have minimal permanent discolouration now. After a shower it is enhanced. The perfect square around my shoulder blade stands out, the redness on my upper left chest near my collar bone is there. And because I have lines on my neck naturally, it deepened them (joy).

I would also say that my radiation foob is much firmer (slightly tighter and perhaps smaller) than my right foob, too. Radiation tends to do that so often times your double mastectomy with implants won’t be perfectly symmetrical or even.

But overall, I don’t think anyone would notice. So I guess I’m happy with the results? Is that… appropriate to say? Haha, who knows.

I’m happy to say Grandma also came back with clear scans after her treatment, and even though she had a G-Tube for awhile, that is now out too and she is slowly but surely healing alongside with me. Hopefully we can see one another this year.

I may have missed a bunch of things since it’s been so long since I had my radiation treatment. So please, if you have any questions at all, leave them down below because they may also be helpful to others! Of course, asking your oncologists is the best, but just to chat about things, I’m here.