Awful pain - 6 months post rads

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For several months, I have been having a lot of pain to my chest, collar bone and shoulder on the side of my mastectomy and rads. Its a sickening pain, aggravated by movements and quite debilitating at its worse. My Onc thinks its from my rads which I had last June 15 x sessions 3 x blasts each time treating my breast area, underarm, neck and shoulder front/rear.

My onc has arranged an MRI to check its nothing more sinister. My instint, which doesn’t have the best track record, tells me it isn’t anything sinister and it will turn out to be the rads

Has anyone got a similar experience and any advice to share?

Thanks, Lea x x x

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Lea,

Do you think it could be muscular?? I frequently get a sharp tightening feeling, like a muscle spasm.
I know we always fear the worst.

julie x

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Hello Lea, only to say I get the same muscle type niggles as Julie…I hope the MRI shows your Onc is right about it being due to rads…xx

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Whatever the cause, it definately has a big muscular impact - it feels like a severe strain. I can’t pull clothes on/off over my head, get up from a slouchy or led down position, small movements can ‘catch’ and hurt like hell and these are like a muscle spasm. When it very first started, weeks ago, I thought I had pulled a muscle in my neck or strained my pecs somehow. No swinging on chandeleirs for me and the wardrobe is certainly not for jumping off so goodness knows what I thought I had done to invoke such a vicious response from my poor battered body (hark me - I hear the worlds smallest voilin strike up its woeful tune)…

Hey ho - its friday. The weekend is here. No work, I’ll hide from my kids and indulge myself a bottle of vino when they sleep (when being operative word here but I will have my indulgence!)… And lets hope the volcanic cloud lets us have sunshine to warm our woes away.

Thanks for your advice Julie and Belinda - you both always make time to respond and word things so well
Love L x x x

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hello
Dont know if this helps but I had severe pain on the rads site for many months. CT and bone scan all showed nothing suspicious and the pain is slowly getting better.My onc said that unfortunately it is just one of those things.
Hope you soon feel better
Hilary

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I sometimes get a cramp like muscle spasm in my ribs on bc side. It usually happens if i bend over or do something to strain the muscle. The pain takes my breath away and i have to keep still until it goes away which only takes about 10 seconds. my onc says its muscle damage from rads 2 years ago.

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I’ve concluded it’s muscular and sure does include lots of spasms. Your comments have been helpful in my analysising and isolating how it hurts though I don’t yet have a why… my money is on post rad SEs… Scan a week tomorrow so I’ll know more in a few weeks. Thanks for all your comments
Best n love
L x