http://kathyjean.blogspot.com/2008/06/tuesday-632008-doctor-day.html )
Tuesdays are "Doctor Day" at the radiation center, and after the zap, we wait to be called by the nurse and shown to an exam room. Melissa sees me come back from the radiation treatment, gets my chart, and calls us back.
After a bit of small talk, she looks at my breast. Oww, she said. Yeah, I said. The nipple and areola really hurt, and it's open under here, and it broke down over the axillary incision about 3 this morning. She listens and looks. Ok, she said. How about some silvadene cream?? And you know, let's do a hydrogen peroxide treatment, too. Ok? Sure. They're the experts. She soaks some gauze pads (sponges) into a half-strength H2O2 solution, squeezes it out until very wet and almost dripping, and lays the on my very reddened, skin sloughing breast. AHHH--That's cold! Why didn't we wait for a hot flash?? She laughed. She had padded me with a large blue pad, so that was absorbing the stuff. She left it on for about 10 minutes, and when she took it off, it did feel better, and a lot of the redness was gone, too. Hm, very good. She asked about the silvadene cream and I said sure. Whatever you need to do, you're the one familiar with this stuff....I lay there on the table, "air drying". Melissa goes out to get supplies, and Dr. DeBiose comes in. He shakes hands with us, and looks at my breast. That looks good, he says. It held up pretty well. He basically just looked at me and told us that we've got 2 more treatments, that I'll have a follow up with him in 4-6 weeks, and if we have any questions, call. Alrighty then. We small talked for a minute, he shook hands again, and left the room.Melissa came back in with several items in her hands. She set them on the counter, and proceeds to do her nursely things: opening packages, setting things out where she wanted them, and chattering all the while. She squeezed a bunch of silvadene cream onto a telfa pad and placed it under my breast. She squeezed silvadene cream and aquaphor onto a half of a telfa pad and placed it on my nipple. Then she squeezed some silvadene cream onto the end of another telfa pad and stuck it to the axillary incision. I'm holding these with my own hands, and she has a long piece of tubular netting, maybe 30 inches or so, which she has snipped and cut. She puts this over my head, then one arm at a time, pulling it down over my chest. She slips a dry gauze pad over my healthy nipple, and declares me good to go. And this is what I ended up with.
I ended up leaving this on for the rest of the day. I did several more of the H2O2 (hydrogen perroxide) soaks over the next few days until the skin stopped feeling so "raw". After that, I just kept the breakdown areas treated with the silvadene cream, and the other skin treated with the aloe vera/elta blend.
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