r/endometrialcancer • u/Talesfromthescript11 • 6d ago

Radiation for pain?

My mom was recently diagnosed (she had spread to her lungs so I’m assuming they’re going to stage it as 4b but they have yet to tell her) and had her first chemo session 3 days ago. She’s been in so much pain for almost a year and started hemorrhaging a few days ago. They weren’t going to do radiation but with the pain and blood loss they are going ahead with it. She has a small lesion on her pelvic bone and a large tumor in her uterus. Has anyone had decreased pain with radiation and how long did it take to see effects? I just want her to not be in pain anymore 😔

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u/sanityjanity 6d ago

My case is less extreme than your mother's, but I can tell you that radiation didn't hurt me at all. There's not even any needle poking. You just lie down, and let a machine move around you for a few minutes, and then you go home.

It made me tired. It made me nauseated for the first week (meds helped). But it never hurt.

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u/Talesfromthescript11 6d ago

Did the radiation help? I’m hoping that it can help her pain along with shrinking the cancer

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u/sanityjanity 6d ago

In my case, my cancer had not escaped my uterus, as far as we could tell. I did radiation and chemo to make absolutely positively certain that no stray cancer cells were hanging around, but I didn't shrink a known tumor.

Best of luck for your mom.

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u/mesembryanthemum 6d ago

Yeah, no pain for me, either. My radiologist says he could see the tumor shrinking after the first 5 sessions. It must have gotten down enough to please him after the planned 10 because we stopped there.

I do wish he hadn't shown it to me on a monitor though. UGH.

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u/Talesfromthescript11 6d ago

That’s great! My mom’s radiologist said the lesion on her bone was small enough to shrink in 5 sessions but they’re doing 10 to zap the uterine stuff as well to hopefully stop the bleeding.

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u/no-user-names- 6d ago

Totally off EC topic, but hopefully helpful: my dad had palliative radio for prostate cancer. No bad side effects, only good ones. I wished he’d started it sooner - it was delayed because he’d only heard bad things about radio. Stopped bleeding and discharge and generally made him feel better.

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u/CABB2020 5d ago

The actual radiation treatment is painless as others have noted. Not sure how much radiation treatment will reduce your mom's pain. Have you discussed some kind of pain management with her oncologist? With chemo, there are a ton of meds given before & after to manage the pain/nausea/inflammation, so that could be an opportunity to help her.

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u/Talesfromthescript11 5d ago

One of the NPs said that there’s nothing in the world they can give her that will cut the pain. The radiologist said that the radiation would help her with pain. The lesion on her bone is the major culprit of the pain so we’re hoping that if that shrinks it will give relief.