Radiation therapy -Lorna (B)

 

Lorna describes the radiation therapy process and her side effects.

Written testimony

I took my daughter in to see it, the (radiation) machine, I said to her “It looks like Star Wars because it’s all these lights and everything. This big round thing and all these lights”. She walked in and the girl was showing her the machine, and I said, “Yeah and when it starts up it all lights up with all these different lights and everything.” My daughter says to me, “I’ll wait outside mum.” but I was fascinated by it. It’s almost like a CAT scan (Computerized Axial Tomography Scan) but bigger and it goes over like this and back and forth and they have to put little tattoos and then I guess they put the radiation in there. It probably goes right though that kind of thing. I think with the breast, or anything like that, you’re not going to get a problem, at least I never had, I just felt tired. And after the, I think it was the 5th one, I can’t remember how many I had. I know I had eight chemo; no pardon me I had um 15 radiation, because then after about 6 or 7 of them it was like you had a sunburn and it hurt, like it was burning, but it was burning from the inside out. Really a strange feeling but they give you cream, of course and then after you’re finished you keep putting the cream on but it takes about 6 months before it’s really out of your system and that you feel it’s out of your system. Strange and scary what it’s doing to you.

*CT scan: Body scan that produces cross section images of the body’s internal structures.

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