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Radiation
Burns
Even
though we were not warned that, during the
two weeks after radiation treatments end,
the skin and inner tissue continue to smolder,
I probably should have expected it. I don’t
remember this happening with Linda, but the
wife of my Caregiver friend from the waiting
room had to return with serious burns a week
after her last treatment.
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When
Corinne finished radiation, her neck and
her throat looked and felt like they had
a mild sunburn. Ten days later, the skin
had continued to burn deeper until there
were blisters, red welts and raw skin.
It was so painful that she couldn’t
bear the abrasion of shirt seams. She
couldn’t sleep. We had to return
to the clinic for wound treatment. We
were now told that the skin would stop
burning, and start healing, in another
few days. It did.
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Again,
I had to seek out the facts from alternate
sources. Here’s the story. Remember
that radiation tears through the cells and
breaks their DNA. And radiation works because
the cells can’t reproduce with broken
DNA. It seems that the cells don’t
really “know” to die until they
try to reproduce. That doesn’t happen
immediately. In the two weeks after treatment,
there’s a growing “plague”
in the irradiated area. In its aftermath,
billions of dying cells caused Corinne’s
pain. |
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