Radiotherapy skin care
Has anyone got any information on skin care for radiation damage. I am a
research sister who frequently comes across this problem, and would
welcome any research or personal experience of this problem.
-Providing it's not the middle of winter(!!) a very natural treatment is
simply bathing in sea water. I did this and it helped my skin
enormously.
Care must be taken to bathe early AM so as not to get sunburn.
-My daughter just finished a round of adjuvant radiation therapy for breast
cancer and had a lot of burning and peeling. She applied nothing to the skin
until she began to burn and then she used aloe vera with topical anesthetic
but found that really nothing applied after the fact helped much. She had 32
days of xray and 5 days of gamma blast.
My husband, on the other hand, had 37 days of xray treatment (6600 rems),
in the chest area for inoperable lung cancer and each day after his session
I would rub his skin down with the same aloe vera gel my daughter used. His
skin would soak the stuff up like a sponge - it was really unbelievable, I
would put a big pool of it in my palm and begin to smooth it over his skin
and it would drink it right in. He experienced some very slight redness, no
burning, and no peeling.
I can think of many reasons for the different reactions; different doses,
different types of radiation, differences in the way it was given, different
molds and sheaths, different skin, as well as differences in when and how
the gel was applied.
Hope this information is helpful in some way.