My Full-Body Radiation Experience

I remember being terrified when I was told I needed radiation as part of my bone marrow transplant preparation because I had no idea what to expect. So, in this post, I thought I’d offer a very brief overview of what my experience with radiation was like. Hopefully this will make things a little less scary for any of you readers out there that may need radiation during the course of your treatments.

It is important to keep in mind while reading this that I have only gotten one type of radiation in my life. There are so many reasons that radiation might be required and tons of different ways to administer the treatment. All I can speak about is my own personal experience with my own radiation treatment – which happened to be full body radiation.

The Experience

Every day for four days during the week before my bone marrow transplant, I would get two rounds of radiation. One in the morning and one in the afternoon. Each session would last 20-30 minutes and would require me to lay as still as I could for the duration.

The hospital staff was really good at making the best out of an uncomfortable situation. For example, they were kind enough to let me make a playlist of music that they would play through a stereo during the treatment session to keep me entertained and calm (for me that meant a lot of Bruce Springsteen).

Side note: this actually helped me a lot. If you are able to listen to music I would highly recommend doing so!

So once my playlist was made, the next step in the process was walking down to the radiation room, which consisted of a large table for me to lay on and a massive, boxy machine hanging directly above it. It looked very intimidating at first.

The radiation technician would get the music playing, I’d get up on the table and lay down, the technician would initiate the radiation coming from the giant machine hanging above me, and I’d hear a light humming sound. And that was it.

Seriously – that was the extent of the radiation. Sometimes I’d even fall asleep. It was so anticlimactic compared to the terrifying thoughts I had in my mind leading up to it. Then I’d go back to my room until the next session and I’d do it all again.

So for any of you that are receiving full body radiation, try not to worry too much about the actual process of getting the radiation. Chances are, if it’s anything like my experience, the treatments themselves will be nothing more than a nap on a slightly uncomfortable table. 

The Side Effects

There is, of course, a list of potential long-term and short-term side effects that your doctors will go over with you. However, because I had a blend of different cancer treatments at the same time, it would be very tough to determine which long term side effects came from radiation specifically, and which ones came from chemotherapy or my bone marrow transplant.

But I can describe the acute side effects that I experienced from my radiation.

After my first round of radiation, I had pretty severe jaw pain. It was bad enough that I needed to ask for pain medication to get through the brunt of it. But after that first round, this jaw pain never came up again. In fact, I had no further pain due to radiation whatsoever.

The second side effect was fatigue. Radiation made me very tired. I slept a lot that week and certainly did not feel like doing much else besides laying in bed.

And that’s really it! That was my personal radiation experience. As I mentioned earlier, all radiation experiences can be different from one another, but I really do hope that this post can take a bit of the stressful mystery out of it for any of you out there needing radiation treatments.

As always guys, please feel free to reach out to me on my contact page if you have any questions, tips of your own, topics you would like to see covered, or just feel like chatting to someone that’s been through it. I am always here for you.

-Alex

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Featured image is one of my own – taking a nice nap after radiation!