I have breast cancer and I’m starting radiation tomorrow. I understand that it’s supposed to reduce the risk of reoccurrence and that it is destroying cells. But how? Which cells are affected? Why will it make me tired?
In: Biology
The same thing regular radiation does, kill cells.
The radiation is very precisely targeted at tumors, and the damaged cells are then detected by your immune system to be destroyed and carried away.
Have you ever gotten sleepy from laying out in the sun? That’s the same thing happening, your immunes system is working hard to clear the damaged cells and that takes a lot of energy, which makes you tired. This is just a tight intense radiation, whereas laying in the sun covers your hole body.
You may also notice you get something similar to a sunburn where the radiation enters your body. That’s literally what it is, sunburns are radiation burns. The swelling, pain, and heat are part of your body’s immune response to clean up the damage.
They basically take a beam and point it right at your tumor. Anything in the path of that beam is affected.
It’s much less aggressive than chemo since it’s targeted rather than all over your body at once.
Its like getting an xray times 100, and then you feel like you spent a day at the beach, but you missed a spot on your sunscreen and without any of the sand.
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