Mondor's Disease / Cording

Going through breast cancer treatment Surgery
1

Hi, I’m looking for advice about Mondor’s Disease. I’ve had it for a number of months now following WLE in March this year. I finally had enough of muddling through and being in constant pain so I contacted my BCN. She referred me for specialist physiotherapy to release it but I’m looking at a 15 week wait for an appointment (this is as an emergency referral!)

 

In the meantime, she advised me to massage the vein in the hope it will ease. I’ve already been massaging it for months and have been exercising since my surgery. However, while I’m finding the massage eases the pain for short periods, it always comes back within an hour or two.

 

Has anyone else had experience of this? I’d love to hear advice about how to treat this myself. Also, how long before this eases? I’m so exhausted from the constant pain. 

 

Naid x

2

Hi Naid, sorry you have had this unexpected complication. I think that’s quite a wait to be treated. I would kick up a great big fuss as I understand that it gets extremely painful. A friend of mine , not in my hospital, unfortunately ended up needing a lot of medical help and wore an arm brace for a while to keep her arm straight as it was pulling up. I was able to manage mine , but I remember standing in a hot shower at 2am crying with pain and massaging my arm. I did my exercises religiously , massaged my arm with warm oil and also paid for lymph massages. I think I was quite lucky to get away with it. I believe the stretching exercises in TaiChi and yoga at Maggies also helped me a lot. I had codeine left over from my chemo and that was helpful in the short term. X