Radiation Fibrosis and Pain

 I have been mentioning pain in my last few posts, so let me summarize the types of pain I have been feeling in my breast and chest:

1. Scar tissue - This pain comes from the scar tissue at surgical sites.  Usually comes when working the muscles near the scars on my outer breasts.  Almost any upper body exercise I do utilize those muscles.  The manual therapy I have been getting hasn't softened the scar tissues as much as hoped.  It does not seem to be uncommon for internal scar tissue to take a long time to heal.  
2. Nerve pain - These are the shooting pains women tend to get after surgery.  Often they are from nerve damage.  I get them a lot in one place, but occasionally will get them elsewhere.  
3. Fibrosis - Over the last few weeks I have noticed that my skin and tissue in the radiated area has thickened and tightened.  Stretching my chest muscles feel like tissue is being torn apart.  
4. Mystery pain - There's an area about the size of my fist in my right chest wall, about 1 o'clock from the nipple.  It feels like someone hit me there with a baseball.  It is more constant than the other types of pain and I find it a little worrisome.  Given my scans were all clear though, the doctors cannot do anything about it.  The hope is it goes away.  

In this post I want to mention radiation fibrosis.  The radiologist never once uttered the word "fibrosis".  Not before treatment, and not even after I mentioned the pain I was having.  Googling tends to return very vague information and a lot of medical journal articles that I don't really discuss things in layman's terms.  What I did find helpful though, were the slew of YouTube videos that discuss radiation fibrosis and how to manage it.  I personally liked the radiation fibrosis videos on this channel: https://www.youtube.com/@breast-cancer-rehab. If you are getting radiation and are not familiar with radiation fibrosis, I would do some research.  I get the feeling radiologists don't like to discuss this with their patients because they don't want to scare them. 

In summary, radiation fibrosis leads to skin and tissue tightening from scarring.  In severe cases mobility can be severely be impacted.  It is important to stretch gently from the beginning to prevent the tissues from losing elasticity completely.  I think exercise also helps get blood flow through the area and promoting better healing.  At least I felt better when I could exercise more regularly than when I'm working.  Massages also help with lymphatic drainage and circulation.  

My case might be considered mild, but the pain is there everyday.  I don't have to take pain killers, but it is uncomfortable and mind my mind is on it often.  All I can do for now is continue with my exercises, stretching, and massages, and then hope that the pain gets better or goes away.  

First Mammogram After Surgery

I had my first mammogram since my surgery in July - almost exactly 6 months ago.  No evidence of malignancey.  I've had a lot of pain though, so they also did an ultrasound.  Nothing found there either except the scar tissue and some skin thickening from radiation.  While I had been worried about the pain, I did not think it was cancer so today's screenings only confirmed what I felt - that I'm cancer free as can be.  I say "as can be" only because there is potential for microscopic cancer cells to be somewhere in my body.  I'm not terribly worried about recurrence though.  I did everything the doctors told me to do, and I am still taking the hormone blocker that will starve any cancer cells left in my body.  What I'm worried more about right now is the damage the radiation did to me.  More on that in the next post.