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
I’m sorry for your diagnosis.
Honestly, the ELI5 explanation is that medical radiation is poison that is directed to the bad areas.
Radiation therapy is essentially burning the cancer tissue with a high dose of ionizing radiation.
As other people said, the general idea with RT and chemo is to exploit cancer cells’ high proliferation rate and low ability to repair DNA damage, meaning that they are more vulnerable to these methods than regular cells.
For radiation therapy in particular, there’s a lot of hard physics involved in calculating the right dose and type of radiation for the depth of the lesion, so that most of it is actually absorbed where the nasty stuff is, while lessening collateral damage to healthy cells in the beam’s path.
Unfortunately, your regular cells do also get hurt in this process, and your body needs to take care of that damage. Also, it’s possible that the large number of cancer cells bursting dead from the treatment will release all sorts of pro-inflammatory signaling molecules, and systemic inflammation will also make you feel tired AF (think acute viral illnesses, or someone with some autoimmune disease)
Other people gave info I could not. Just saw post while scrolling and wanna say good luck ! You got this!
Radiation therapy for cancer works like this.
If you got a surgery, the goal is to have removed the bulk of the cancer cells out with the tumor. Maybe the surgery removed 99% of the cells. As long as there’s a little bit left behind, those cancer cells can regrow. You shoot the remaining 1% with radiation with the hope of bringing it down to 0%.
Radiation is an invisible beam of light, kind of like focusing the sun’s light with a magnifying glass to make one small very hot spot. When you get radiation therapy, they will shoot multiple weaker radiation beams at you from all different directions and angles and the 1 tiny spot where they converge will get a summed up big dose.
The radiation will kill all cells in its path, but it damages cells that divide rapidly more so. The idea is that cancer cells divide more rapidly than your normal cells, so ideally they will be damaged more. The cancer cells should also be right in the little focused spot where all the beams converge and therefore damaged more. The act of a bunch of cells dying and their insides spilling out and into your bloodstream can cause fevers and fatigue.
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.
Here is a free app from the [Canadian Breast Cancer Network](https://www.cbcn.ca/en/health-storylines).
Also, and this might scare the crap out of you, sorry, but it can [affect your heart](https://cancer.ca/en/treatments/side-effects/heart-problems). From the Canadian Cancer Society. Depends on a lot of factors, of course, but forewarning can mean you are keeping your eye out for odd things.
It will give you a bad sunburn. Get this stuff called Aquafor (sp?) and use it every day. The burns will get worse even after you stop treatment. Also, I wasnt prepared for the long term effects of radiation. I am still dealing with the damage to my body 10 years later. It sucks, but hey I am alive so theres that.
Hang in there OP.
I just finished 28 days of radiation (which took two months) for endometrial cancer. Funny thing is, I really started ‘feeling’ it after the radiation ended. Massive nausea, and I have no energy. My skin didn’t get burned like I was warned, but god the nausea was worse than I expected. I think it probably affects people differently, though. So your experience might not be the same as mine.
Seriously, fuck cancer. I’m wishing you good luck.
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